Tasteprint

Tasteprint is a travel food passport. Users record dishes they have tried, see which parts of a food culture they have covered, receive a five-bite mission for an upcoming trip, and compare or combine their map with friends.

The product measures cultural breadth instead of restaurant visits. Each destination starts with six entry points: staple, street food, breakfast, sweet, drink, and signature dish. Importance weights keep a famous or defining dish more meaningful than a secondary discovery.

What is included

Account registration, login, opaque bearer sessions, logout, editable profiles, and verified account deletion
A curated atlas of 12 destinations and 72 dishes
Tasting journal with ratings, notes, dates, places, coordinates, and validated photo uploads
Weighted world and destination coverage
Important missing dishes based on the user's current map and next trip
Trips with a persisted five-bite mission and date-aware completion
Shared destination challenges with invite codes and group progress
Public Tasteprint pages with privacy controls
Two-person taste map comparison and a suggested shared bite
Responsive desktop and mobile interfaces
OpenAPI documentation, health probes, Docker deployment, and CI

Architecture

Browser
  |
  v
Nginx, React single-page application
  |
  +---- /api and /uploads
            |
            v
      Spring Boot modular monolith
       |          |          |
       v          v          v
   PostgreSQL  file media  health and OpenAPI

The backend is a modular monolith. Account, catalog, tasting, journey, progress, media, social, and demo data are separate Java packages with verified Spring Modulith boundaries. This keeps deployment and transactions simple while preserving service boundaries that can be extracted later if scale requires it.

See Architecture for module ownership, request flows, security choices, and the reasons for not starting with microservices.

Stack

Area	Technology
Backend	Java 21, Spring Boot 3.5, Spring Security, Spring Data JPA
Architecture	Spring Modulith
Database	PostgreSQL 17, Flyway migrations, H2 for fast integration tests
Frontend	React 19, TypeScript 5.9, Vite, TanStack Query, React Router
Map	D3 Geo, TopoJSON, Natural Earth data through world-atlas
Testing	JUnit 5, MockMvc, Testcontainers, Vitest, Testing Library
Delivery	Docker Compose, Nginx, GitHub Actions

Run with Docker

Requirements: Docker Desktop or Docker Engine with Compose.

cp .env.example .env
docker compose up --build

Open:

Application: http://localhost:3000
API documentation: http://localhost:8080/docs
Backend readiness: http://localhost:8080/actuator/health/readiness

The local demo account is:

Email: demo@tasteprint.app
Password: tasteprint

Set DEMO_DATA_ENABLED=false before a public deployment. Replace the sample database password in .env with a generated secret.

Run for development

Start the backend. No local database is required because development defaults to a file-backed H2 database in PostgreSQL compatibility mode.

cd backend
.\mvnw.cmd spring-boot:run

In another terminal:

cd frontend
npm install
npm run dev

Vite serves the interface at http://localhost:5173 and proxies API and upload requests to port 8080.

Tests

Backend tests cover authentication, validation, privacy, ownership, tasting CRUD, paging, trip missions, shared challenge progress, media validation, CORS, module boundaries, and application startup.

cd backend
.\mvnw.cmd verify

The PostgreSQL compatibility test runs automatically when Docker is available and skips cleanly when it is not.

Frontend tests cover the API client, expired sessions, protected routing, date behavior, and formatting. The production build also performs strict TypeScript checking.

cd frontend
npm test
npm run lint
npm run build

Configuration

Variable	Purpose	Local default
`DB_URL`	JDBC database URL	File-backed H2
`DB_USER`	Database user	`sa`
`DB_PASSWORD`	Database password	Empty
`APP_ALLOWED_ORIGINS`	Comma-separated browser origins	Local frontend ports
`MEDIA_DIRECTORY`	Photo storage path	`./uploads`
`DEMO_DATA_ENABLED`	Seed demo accounts and activity	`true`
`PORT`	Backend HTTP port	`8080`

Product rules

A dish counts toward a user's global Tasteprint wherever it was eaten.
A dish counts toward a trip only when the tasting country and date match that trip.
A challenge combines member dishes logged within its date range. This allows both travel groups and local tasting clubs.
Coverage is weighted by cultural importance and means breadth, not expertise.
Public pages are private by default and never expose email addresses, exact coordinates, restaurant details, or internal timestamps.
Uploaded files are limited to 6 MB, checked by MIME type and file signature, bound to their owner, and removed with their last tasting or account.

The catalog is intentionally stored as reviewed migration data, not copied blindly from a third-party popularity feed. Adding a destination means adding six balanced cultural entry points with an explanation of why each matters.

rasmusjy / tasteprint