Roomie Backend

REST API for Roomie, Cornell AppDev's roommate management app (houses, chores, shopping list; bills, calendar, moodboard and storage later).

It follows the layout of AppDev's newest backend, eatery-blue-backend, so anyone who has worked there will feel at home.

Right now main only serves GET /health. Login, profile, houses, chores and the shopping list are built and tested on the mvp-features branch. Bring them back with git revert <the "Strip main back to /health" commit>, or copy single features over with git checkout mvp-features -- src/<feature>.

Stack

Runtime	Node 22, TypeScript, Express 5
Database	PostgreSQL 16 via Prisma 7 (@prisma/adapter-pg)
Validation	Zod 4
Auth	Firebase Auth (Google sign-in) verified with firebase-admin; @cornell.edu only
Tests	Vitest + Supertest against a real Postgres
Deploy	Docker image → Docker Hub → SSH + docker compose (same as Eatery)

Differences from Eatery: Prisma 7 instead of 6 (the client no longer needs a native engine), and auth uses Google sign-in instead of a device UUID, because Roomie needs to know who you are to put you in a house.

Getting started

npm install
cp .env.example .env
docker compose -f docker-compose.dev.yml up -d     # local Postgres on :5432
npx prisma generate                                # builds the Prisma client into src/generated (rerun after schema changes)
npx prisma migrate dev                             # creates the tables
npm run dev                                        # http://localhost:8000

Check it's running:

curl localhost:8000/health        # {"status":"healthy","database":"connected",...}

Postman

Import docs/roomie.postman_collection.json (Postman → Import → pick the file) and send Health check. Point baseUrl at the dev server once it's deployed.

Tests

Tests use a separate roomie_test database and wipe it before every test.

createdb -h localhost -U roomie roomie_test   # once (or: docker compose exec db createdb -U roomie roomie_test)
DATABASE_URL=postgresql://roomie:roomie@localhost:5432/roomie_test npx prisma migrate deploy
npm test

Changing the schema

Edit prisma/schema.prisma, then npx prisma migrate dev --name what_changed and npx prisma generate (Prisma 7 no longer generates on migrate). Commit the generated folder in prisma/migrations/. The Docker image runs prisma migrate deploy on start.

How login will work

iOS / Android                                   Roomie API
─────────────                                   ──────────
Google sign-in through Firebase Auth
(hint hd=cornell.edu in the Google picker)
        │ Firebase ID token
        ▼
POST /auth/login  Authorization: Bearer <id token>
                                                verify token with firebase-admin
                                                reject non-@cornell.edu emails
                                                create user on first login (netid = email prefix)
        ◀──────────── { isNewUser, user, house, pendingInvites }

every other request: Authorization: Bearer <id token>
(the Firebase SDK refreshes it automatically; just ask it for the current token)

The app picks the first screen from the login response: no house and pending invites → "join this house?"; no house → onboarding; a house → Home.

Never send Cornell passwords to this server. The sign-in design shows a NetID + password form; that needs to become a "Continue with Cornell Google" button.

AUTH_DEV_BYPASS=true lets you send Bearer dev:<netid> instead of a real token. It is ignored when NODE_ENV=production.

Firebase setup (once, by whoever owns the project)

1. Create a Firebase project and enable Google as a sign-in provider.
2. Add the iOS and Android apps in Firebase (they need GoogleService-Info.plist / google-services.json).
3. Project settings → Service accounts → Generate new private key. Save it as firebase-service-account.json in the repo root (it's gitignored), or put the JSON into FIREBASE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_JSON.

Project layout

src/
  app.ts                 Express app: middleware + routers (exported for tests)
  server.ts              starts the HTTP server
  prisma.ts              Prisma client
  middleware/            validateRequest, errors, logging, rate limit
  utils/                 AppError (from Eatery)
  <feature>/             one folder per feature: Router → Controller → Service, plus <feature>.schema.ts (Zod)
prisma/
  schema.prisma          every table
  migrations/
test/                    integration tests (one file per feature; just /health for now)

Conventions

• Errors: throw NotFoundError, ForbiddenError, etc. from utils/AppError.ts. Express 5 forwards async errors to globalErrorHandler, which returns { status, statusCode, message, errorCode, data? }.
• Validation: each route gets validateRequest(schema); in the controller, valid(req, schema) returns the typed, parsed { body, query, params }.
• Money is always whole cents (priceCents: 429 = $4.29).
• Date-only values (due dates, lease end) are "YYYY-MM-DD" strings in the API and DATE in Postgres. "Today" means today in the house's timezone, not the server's.
• House routes live under /houses/:houseId/... behind requireHouseMember, which answers 404 to non-members so house IDs can't be probed.

Deploying

.github/workflows/deploy-dev.yml and deploy-prod.yml are Eatery's workflows renamed for Roomie. They are manual-only for now. Once AppDev sets up a server and a cornellappdev/roomie-dev Docker Hub repo, add the secrets (DOCKER_USERNAME, DOCKER_PASSWORD, DEV_SERVER_HOST, SERVER_USERNAME, DEV_SERVER_KEY) and uncomment the push trigger. ci.yml runs type checks and tests on every PR.