WanderLust 🌍

WanderLust is a full-stack Airbnb-style listings web app built with Node.js, Express, MongoDB, and EJS. Users can browse, search, and filter property listings, view them on an interactive map, sign up and log in, create and manage their own listings with image uploads, and leave star-rated reviews.

Live demo: wanderlust-l6tk.onrender.com

Note: the app is hosted on Render's free tier, so the first request after a period of inactivity may take a few seconds to spin up.

Features

• Listings CRUD — create, view, edit, and delete property listings
• Search & filter — search by title/location/country and filter by category (Rooms, Iconic Cities, Mountains, Castles, Amazing Pools, Camping, Farms, Arctic, Trending)
• Trending sort — surfaces listings with the most reviews
• Interactive maps — listing locations are geocoded and shown on a Leaflet map
• Reviews & ratings — logged-in users can leave star ratings and comments on listings
• Authentication — sign up / log in / log out powered by Passport.js, with session persistence in MongoDB
• Authorization — only a listing's owner can edit or delete it; only logged-in users can create listings or reviews
• Image uploads — listing photos are uploaded and served via Cloudinary
• Server-side validation — request bodies validated with Joi
• Flash messages — success/error feedback after key actions
• Centralized error handling — custom error class with a catch-all 404 and error page

Tech Stack

Layer	Technology
Runtime	Node.js
Server / Routing	Express 5
Templating	EJS + EJS-Mate (layouts)
Database	MongoDB + Mongoose
Auth	Passport.js (passport-local, passport-local-mongoose)
Sessions	express-session + connect-mongo
File storage	Cloudinary + Multer
Geocoding	Geoapify API
Maps	Leaflet.js
Validation	Joi
Frontend	Bootstrap, custom CSS, vanilla JS

Project Structure

WanderLust/
├── controllers/      # Route handler logic (listings, reviews, users)
├── init/             # DB seed script and sample data
├── models/           # Mongoose schemas (Listing, Review, User)
├── public/           # Static assets (CSS, client-side JS)
├── routes/           # Express routers
├── utils/            # Custom error class, async wrapper, geocoding helper
├── views/            # EJS templates and layouts
├── app.js            # App entry point
├── cloudConfig.js    # Cloudinary/Multer storage config
├── middleware.js     # Auth/ownership/validation middleware
└── schema.js         # Joi validation schemas

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Node.js (v18+ recommended)
• A MongoDB database (local instance or a free MongoDB Atlas cluster)
• A Cloudinary account (for image uploads)
• A Geoapify API key (for geocoding listing locations)

Installation

1. Clone the repository

   git clone https://github.com/Pearl-99/WanderLust.git
   cd WanderLust

2. Install dependencies

   npm install

3. Create a .env file in the project root with the following variables:

   ATLASDB_URL=your_mongodb_connection_string
   SECRET=your_session_secret
   CLOUD_NAME=your_cloudinary_cloud_name
   CLOUD_API_KEY=your_cloudinary_api_key
   CLOUD_API_SECRET=your_cloudinary_api_secret
   GEOAPIFY_API_KEY=your_geoapify_api_key

4. (Optional) Seed the database with sample listings

   node init/index.js

5. Start the server

   node app.js

6. Visit http://localhost:8080 in your browser

Usage

• Browse listings on the home page, or use the search bar and category filters to narrow results
• Sign up for an account to create new listings or leave reviews
• Click into any listing to see full details, its location on the map, and existing reviews
• Listing owners can edit or delete their own listings from the listing's detail page