ProjectPulse

ProjectPulse is a production-style project-management portfolio app built with an ASP.NET Core 8 Clean Architecture API and a React/Vite/Tailwind dashboard. It demonstrates realistic project and task workflows with project membership, role-based permissions, task assignment, status transitions, comments, audit history, Swagger/OpenAPI documentation, demo-session isolation, and automated tests.

The backend is the core of the project. The frontend is a polished demo client that makes the API workflow easy to review through a public portfolio-ready interface.

Live Demo

• Frontend Demo: https://projectpulse-demo.vercel.app
• API Docs: https://projectpulse-api-00h9.onrender.com/swagger

Demo sessions are temporary and may reset when the hosted free backend restarts. Start a new demo session to reload the seeded workspace.

What This Demonstrates

• Clean Architecture boundaries: Domain, Application, Infrastructure, and Api
• CQRS-style commands and queries with MediatR
• FluentValidation request validation and centralized exception handling
• EF Core persistence with SQLite
• Public demo-session flow with isolated seeded workspaces
• Realistic seeded project, task, member, comment, and audit data
• Project creation workflow with details, member roles, and file-upload placeholder
• Task creation workflow with description, priority, status, due date, assignee, file-upload placeholder, and context notes
• Domain rules for task status transitions and project membership permissions
• Role-aware project membership with Admin, Member, and Viewer roles
• Viewer users excluded from task assignment
• Last-admin protection when removing project members
• Automatic task unassignment when a removed member had assigned tasks
• Audit logging for projects, tasks, comments, assignments, status changes, and membership changes
• Clickable activity cards with detailed activity modal/context view
• Swagger/OpenAPI for direct API exploration
• React dashboard with project, task, member, and activity workflows
• Unit and integration tests with CI-ready commands

Tech Stack

Layer	Technologies
API	ASP.NET Core 8 Web API, Swagger/OpenAPI
Application	MediatR, FluentValidation
Domain	Entities, enums, domain rules
Infrastructure	EF Core, SQLite
Frontend	React, TypeScript, Vite, Tailwind CSS, TanStack Query
Tests	xUnit, FluentAssertions, WebApplicationFactory
DevOps	Docker Compose, GitHub Actions, Vercel, Render

Architecture

flowchart TB
  Client[React Dashboard / Swagger]
  Api[ProjectPulse.Api]
  App[ProjectPulse.Application]
  Domain[ProjectPulse.Domain]
  Infra[ProjectPulse.Infrastructure]
  Db[(SQLite)]

  Client --> Api
  Api --> App
  App --> Domain
  App --> Infra
  Infra --> Domain
  Infra --> Db

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Demo Screenshots

Demo Session Start

ProjectPulse uses a lightweight public demo-session flow instead of full user accounts. Visitors can start a temporary workspace with realistic seeded projects, tasks, members, and activity.

Dashboard

The dashboard summarizes the seeded workspace with project/task metrics, recent activity, and a quick-start guide for exploring the demo.

Projects Workspace

The Projects page presents realistic project cards with descriptions, task counts, member counts, and workspace-level actions.

Project Detail, Tasks, Members, And Activity

Project detail pages show project metrics, progress, task cards, task creation, member management, role labels, and recent project activity in one workspace view.

Task Creation Flow

The task creation flow captures enough information for a realistic task: title, detailed description, priority, status, due date, eligible assignee, file-upload placeholder, and optional context notes.

Activity Details

The Activity page provides an audit-style history of workspace events. Activity cards are clickable and open a detail view with actor, timestamp, action type, related task/project context, and comments when available.

Swagger/OpenAPI

Swagger exposes the raw API contract for dashboard, demo sessions, projects, tasks, users, activity, project members, comments, and status/assignment endpoints.

Core Workflows

• Start a public demo session with seeded project/task/member data.
• View dashboard metrics for projects, open tasks, completed tasks, overdue tasks, and recent activity.
• Browse realistic seeded projects.
• Create projects with name, description, member selection, role assignment, and file-upload placeholder.
• Add members to a project as Admin, Member, or Viewer.
• Remove project members while protecting the final admin.
• Create tasks with title, detailed description, priority, status, due date, eligible assignee, file-upload placeholder, and optional context.
• Assign tasks only to eligible project members. Viewer users cannot be assigned tasks.
• Edit task title, description, priority, due date, and assignee.
• Move tasks through allowed status transitions.
• Add comments to tasks.
• Review audit history across project and workspace activity feeds.
• Click activity records to inspect detailed event context.
• Inspect and test endpoints directly through Swagger.

Run Locally

1. API

Prerequisite: .NET 8 SDK

From the repository root:

dotnet restore
dotnet run --project src/ProjectPulse.Api

• Swagger: http://localhost:5000/swagger
• API base: http://localhost:5000

Or with Docker:

docker compose up --build api

2. Frontend Dashboard

Prerequisite: Node.js 20+

The frontend package.json is inside frontend/, so run npm commands from that directory:

cd frontend
npm install
npm run dev

• Dashboard: http://localhost:5173

The Vite dev server proxies /api to http://localhost:5000.

Demo Flow

1. Start the API and frontend.
2. Click Start New Demo Session to create an isolated seeded workspace for this browser.
3. Review dashboard metrics and recent activity.
4. Open the Projects page and browse seeded projects.
5. Create a project with a name, description, member roles, and file-upload placeholder.
6. Open a project detail page and review tasks, members, progress, and recent activity.
7. Add project members as Admin, Member, or Viewer.
8. Create a task with a detailed description, priority, status, due date, eligible assignee, and context notes.
9. Open or update tasks to change status, priority, due date, assignee, and comments.
10. Remove a project member and confirm their assigned project tasks become unassigned.
11. Open Activity to review audit entries for tasks, assignments, comments, and membership changes.
12. Click an activity record to inspect detailed event context.
13. Open Swagger to inspect and test the raw API endpoints.
14. Use Clear and start new session to create a fresh seeded workspace.

API Highlights

# List projects
curl http://localhost:5000/api/projects

# Create a project
curl -X POST http://localhost:5000/api/projects \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"name":"Sprint 42","description":"Q2 delivery"}'

# Add a project member
curl -X POST http://localhost:5000/api/projects/{projectId}/members \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"userId":"{userId}","role":"Member"}'

# Create an assigned task
curl -X POST http://localhost:5000/api/tasks \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"projectId":"{projectId}","title":"Build task workflow","description":"Implement the project task workflow and validation rules.","priority":"High","status":"Open","assigneeId":"{userId}","dueDateUtc":null}'

# Change task status
curl -X PATCH http://localhost:5000/api/tasks/{taskId}/status \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"status":"InProgress"}'

# Assign or unassign a task
curl -X PATCH http://localhost:5000/api/tasks/{taskId}/assign \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"assigneeId":"{userId}"}'

# Add a comment to a task
curl -X POST http://localhost:5000/api/tasks/{taskId}/comments \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"body":"Confirmed the workflow edge case and added a test note."}'

# Remove a project member
curl -X DELETE http://localhost:5000/api/projects/{projectId}/members/{userId}

# Project summary and activity
curl http://localhost:5000/api/projects/{projectId}/summary
curl http://localhost:5000/api/projects/{projectId}/activity

# Workspace activity
curl http://localhost:5000/api/activity

Authorization Note

This demo uses a lightweight portfolio-demo session instead of full user accounts. The frontend stores a generated demo session ID in browser local storage and sends it as X-ProjectPulse-Demo-Session; the API scopes projects, tasks, users, and activity to that session's seeded workspace.

Without the header, Swagger/local API calls still use the seeded admin user. Project membership rules are enforced in the application layer: only admins can manage project members, only admins can delete projects, only admins or members can manage tasks, and viewers cannot be assigned tasks. JWT authentication and production-ready role-based authorization are planned for a future version.

Hosted Demo Deployment

Current hosted demo:

• Frontend: Vercel
• API: Render
• Database: SQLite-backed demo storage

Recommended production-oriented upgrade path:

• Move demo persistence to hosted Postgres, or
• Use a paid Render instance with a persistent disk mounted for SQLite

Backend environment variables:

ConnectionStrings__DefaultConnection=Data Source=/data/projectpulse.db
Cors__AllowedOrigins__0=https://your-projectpulse-demo.vercel.app

Frontend environment variables:

VITE_API_BASE_URL=https://your-projectpulse-api.onrender.com
VITE_API_DOCS_URL=https://your-projectpulse-api.onrender.com/swagger

Tests

dotnet test

Frontend checks:

cd frontend
npm run lint
npm run build

The test suite includes unit tests for domain/application behavior and integration tests for API workflows such as project deletion, task updates, status changes, demo-session isolation, and project member add/remove behavior.

CI

GitHub Actions runs restore, build, and test checks on every push to main.

Project Structure

src/
  ProjectPulse.Api/
  ProjectPulse.Application/
  ProjectPulse.Domain/
  ProjectPulse.Infrastructure/

tests/
  ProjectPulse.UnitTests/
  ProjectPulse.IntegrationTests/

frontend/
  React + Vite + Tailwind dashboard

Planned Improvements

• JWT authentication and production-ready authorization
• Persistent hosted database for longer-lived public demo sessions
• Role editing for existing project members
• Kanban-style task board
• File attachment storage and download support
• More detailed dashboard charts and reporting filters
• User account registration and workspace invite flow