A real-time chat application with authentication, messaging, and image sharing capabilities. Built using React, Express, Socket.io, and MongoDB.

• 🔐 User Authentication (Sign up, Login with JWT & Cookies)
• 💬 Real-time Messaging (Socket.io-powered)
• 📸 Image Upload Support (Sends large images)
• 🗂️ Chat History (Stored in MongoDB)
• 🔔 Online Status Indicators
• 🌍 Cross-Origin Communication (CORS-enabled backend)

• Frontend: React (Vite) + Tailwind CSS
• Backend: Node.js + Express.js + Socket.io
• Database: MongoDB + Mongoose
• Authentication: JWT + Cookies

This project requires several environment variables to be set up in the .env file for the backend.

Below are the variables you need to add to your .env file make one in /Backend:

MONGODB_URI=your_mongodb_connection_string
CLOUDINARY_CLOUD_NAME=your_cloudinary_cloud_name
CLOUDINARY_API_KEY=your_cloudinary_api_key
CLOUDINARY_API_SECRET=your_cloudinary_api_secret
JWT_SECRET=your_jwt_secret_key
PORT=5001
NODE_ENV=development

npm run build

npm start

npm run dev