HRLite — Employee Management System

A Full-stack portfolio project demonstrating Clean Architecture, CQRS, multi-tenancy, containerisation, and CI/CD.

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Goal

Build a scalable, maintainable platform that showcases:

• Backend engineering with .NET 9 and Clean Architecture
• Frontend engineering with Angular 17 and Signals
• Cloud-native patterns (multi-tenancy, audit logging, blob storage)
• Infrastructure as code (Docker, GitHub Actions)
• Test-driven quality (43 unit tests)

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Tech Stack

Backend

Layer	Technology
Runtime	.NET 9 Web API
Architecture	Clean Architecture (Domain → Application → Infrastructure → API)
CQRS	MediatR 14
ORM	Entity Framework Core 9
Database	SQL Server / Azure SQL
Validation	FluentValidation 12
Mapping	AutoMapper 16
Auth	JWT Bearer + RBAC (Admin, HR, Manager)
Audit Logging	Azure Cosmos DB
File Storage	Azure Blob Storage
Logging	Serilog
API Docs	Swagger / Swashbuckle

Frontend

Layer	Technology
Framework	Angular 17 (standalone components)
State	Angular Signals
HTTP	RxJS + custom ApiService
UI	Angular Material
Auth	JWT interceptor + role-based guards

Infrastructure

Concern	Technology
Containerisation	Docker + Docker Compose
CI	GitHub Actions (PR validation)
Cloud Target	Azure App Service + Azure Static Web Apps

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Architecture

HRLite/
├── backend/
│   ├── src/
│   │   ├── HRLite.Domain/          # Entities, Enums, Interfaces
│   │   ├── HRLite.Application/     # CQRS Handlers, DTOs, Validators, Mappings
│   │   ├── HRLite.Infrastructure/  # EF Core, Repos, JWT, Cosmos, Blob
│   │   └── HRLite.API/             # Controllers, Middleware, Program.cs
│   └── tests/
│       ├── HRLite.Domain.Tests/    # Entity unit tests (xUnit)
│       └── HRLite.Application.Tests/ # Handler & validator tests (xUnit + NSubstitute)
├── frontend/
│   └── hrlite-ui/                  # Angular 17 app
├── docker-compose.yml              # SQL Server + API + Frontend
└── .github/workflows/ci.yml        # PR validation pipeline

Key Patterns

• Clean Architecture — strict layer boundaries; Domain has zero external dependencies
• CQRS via MediatR — every use case is an isolated command or query handler
• Repository pattern — IRepository<T> abstracts all data access
• Pipeline behaviours — logging and validation run automatically before every handler
• Multi-tenancy — TenantId on every entity, enforced via EF Core global query filters
• Soft delete — IsDeleted flag + global query filter; no hard deletes
• JWT + RBAC — three roles (Admin, HR, Manager) enforced at controller and route level

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Features

Module	Capabilities
Authentication	Login, JWT token, role-based access
Employees	Create, read, update, soft delete; auto-generated employee code
Departments	CRUD with employee count
Leave Management	Apply, approve/reject, track status
Attendance	Mark daily attendance, duplicate prevention
Documents	Upload to Azure Blob, store metadata in SQL

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Prerequisites

Tool	Version
Docker Desktop	Latest (WSL2 backend on Windows)
.NET SDK	9.0 (for local development only)
Node.js	20+ (for local development only)

Docker is the only requirement to run the full stack.

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Running Locally with Docker

1. Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/HRLite.git
cd HRLite

2. Start all services

docker-compose up --build

This will:

1. Start SQL Server and wait for it to be healthy
2. Start the .NET API — runs EF migrations and seeds demo data automatically
3. Start the Angular frontend served via nginx

3. Access the app

Service	URL
Frontend	http://localhost:4200
API Swagger	http://localhost:5217/swagger
SQL Server	localhost,1433

4. Demo credentials

Tenant: tenant-demo

Role	Email	Password
Admin	admin@hrlite.com	Admin@123
HR	hr@hrlite.com	Hr@12345
Manager	manager@hrlite.com	Manager@123

Useful Docker commands

# Run in background
docker-compose up --build -d

# View API logs
docker-compose logs -f api

# Stop everything
docker-compose down

# Wipe database and start fresh
docker-compose down -v

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Running Locally without Docker

Backend

cd backend
dotnet restore
dotnet run --project src/HRLite.API

Update appsettings.Development.json with a valid SQL Server connection string before running.

Frontend

cd frontend/hrlite-ui
npm install
ng serve

App will be available at http://localhost:4200.

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Running Tests

cd backend
dotnet test --verbosity normal

Project	Tests	Coverage
HRLite.Domain.Tests	14	Entity defaults, invariants
HRLite.Application.Tests	29	Command handlers, validators

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Configuration

Environment variables (Docker)

Sensitive values are passed as environment variables in docker-compose.yml. Before deploying to production, replace all placeholder values:

Variable	Description
ConnectionStrings__DefaultConnection	SQL Server connection string
Jwt__Key	JWT signing key (min 32 chars)
CosmosDb__ConnectionString	Azure Cosmos DB connection string
AzureBlob__ConnectionString	Azure Blob Storage connection string

Important: The credentials in appsettings.Development.json and docker-compose.yml are for local development only. Never use them in production. Use Azure Key Vault or environment-specific secrets management instead.

Azure services (optional)

Cosmos DB and Azure Blob Storage are optional for local development. If connection strings contain placeholder values (REPLACE), the application automatically falls back to a no-op audit logger and will skip blob operations.

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CI/CD

A GitHub Actions workflow runs on every pull request to main:

Job	What it does
backend	Restore → Build → Test
frontend	npm ci → ng build --production
docker	docker compose build (image validation)

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Roadmap

• Azure deployment (App Service + Static Web Apps)
• OpenTelemetry tracing
• Redis caching for frequently read data
• Refresh token support
• Pagination filters on all list endpoints