✨ Aura Book
Modern Beauty & Wellness Appointment Booking Platform
Aura Book is a modern, full-stack appointment booking platform designed for beauty salons, spas, makeup artists, stylists, and personal-care businesses.
It provides a centralized experience for customers, stylists, and administrators to manage services, appointments, availability, payments, and business operations through a clean and scalable web application.
🌐 Live Demo
Experience Aura Book in action:
Try the application: Explore the booking experience, browse services, select appointments, and experience the Aura Book interface.
🔗 Application
Live Link: https://aura-book-client.netlify.app
Source Code: https://github.com/ghsjulian/aura-book
Book your time. Choose your style. Experience Aura.
🌸 Overview
Aura Book is built around a simple idea:
Make beauty-service booking as smooth, visual, and reliable as possible.
Instead of relying on phone calls, messages, or manual appointment books, Aura Book provides a digital booking workflow where customers can:
- Browse available beauty services
- Select preferred services
- Choose a stylist or available professional
- Select an appointment date and time
- Review booking details
- Complete the booking process
- Receive booking confirmation
Meanwhile, stylists and administrators can manage schedules, availability, services, appointments, and business activity from dedicated interfaces.
🎯 Core Goals
Aura Book is designed to solve common problems in traditional appointment management:
| Problem | Aura Book Solution |
|---|---|
| Manual appointment management | Centralized digital booking |
| Double bookings | Availability-aware booking logic |
| Difficult service selection | Visual service-based workflow |
| Staff scheduling complexity | Dedicated availability management |
| Lack of business visibility | Administrative dashboard |
| Poor customer experience | Modern responsive interface |
| Fragmented booking information | Centralized appointment data |
🚀 Key Features
👩💼 Customer Experience
- Browse beauty and wellness services
- View service details and pricing
- Select preferred services
- Choose a stylist or available professional
- Select appointment dates
- Select available time slots
- Review booking information
- Track appointment status
- Receive booking confirmation
💇 Stylist Management
Stylists can manage their professional schedule through a dedicated workflow.
- View upcoming appointments
- Manage daily schedules
- Configure availability
- Block unavailable periods
- Manage appointment status
- Track completed appointments
🛠️ Admin Management
The administrative layer provides centralized control over the platform.
- Manage services
- Manage staff/stylists
- Manage appointments
- Monitor booking activity
- Control availability
- Review business operations
- Manage platform data
⚡ Smart Booking Logic
Aura Book is designed to handle appointment scheduling with availability awareness.
The system can be extended to prevent situations such as:
Customer A
│
├── Selects Stylist
├── Selects Date
└── Selects 04:00 PM
│
▼
Availability Check
│
┌──────┴──────┐
│ │
Available Booked
│ │
▼ ▼
Confirm Reject / Retry
This architecture provides a foundation for reliable appointment management and future real-time slot synchronization.
🏗️ Architecture
Aura Book follows a decoupled full-stack architecture:
┌─────────────────────┐
│ CUSTOMER │
│ STYLIST │
│ ADMIN │
└──────────┬──────────┘
│
▼
┌─────────────────────┐
│ React Client │
│ TypeScript + Vite │
└──────────┬──────────┘
│
HTTP / REST
│
▼
┌─────────────────────┐
│ Express Server │
│ TypeScript │
└──────────┬──────────┘
│
┌─────────────────┼─────────────────┐
│ │ │
▼ ▼ ▼
Authentication Business Logic Validation
│ │ │
└─────────────────┼─────────────────┘
│
▼
┌─────────────────────┐
│ MongoDB │
│ Mongoose │
└─────────────────────┘
🧰 Tech Stack
Frontend
| Technology | Purpose |
|---|---|
| React 19 | UI development |
| TypeScript | Static type safety |
| Vite | Development & production build |
| Redux Toolkit | Global application state |
| TanStack Query | Server-state management |
| React Router | Client-side routing |
| Axios | HTTP communication |
| Lucide React | Interface icons |
| ESLint | Code quality |
The current frontend package uses React, TypeScript, Vite, Redux Toolkit, TanStack Query, Axios, React Router, and Lucide React.
Backend
| Technology | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Node.js | Runtime |
| Express 5 | REST API |
| TypeScript | Type-safe backend |
| MongoDB | Database |
| Mongoose | ODM |
| JWT | Authentication |
| bcryptjs | Password hashing |
| Multer | File uploads |
| Helmet | HTTP security |
| CORS | Cross-origin access |
| Morgan | HTTP logging |
| dotenv | Environment configuration |
| tsx | Development runtime |
These dependencies are reflected in the current server package configuration.
📁 Project Structure
aura-book/
│
├── client/
│ │
│ ├── src/
│ │ ├── components/
│ │ ├── pages/
│ │ ├── layouts/
│ │ ├── hooks/
│ │ ├── services/
│ │ ├── store/
│ │ ├── types/
│ │ └── ...
│ │
│ ├── public/
│ ├── package.json
│ ├── tsconfig.json
│ └── vite.config.ts
│
├── server/
│ │
│ ├── src/
│ │ ├── controllers/
│ │ ├── routes/
│ │ ├── models/
│ │ ├── middleware/
│ │ ├── services/
│ │ ├── utils/
│ │ └── server.ts
│ │
│ ├── package.json
│ └── tsconfig.json
│
├── project-overview.md
└── README.md
The exact internal structure may evolve as the application grows. The repository currently separates the application into
clientandserverprojects.
⚙️ Getting Started
Prerequisites
Make sure you have the following installed:
- Node.js
- npm
- MongoDB
- Git
📥 Clone Repository
git clone https://github.com/ghsjulian/aura-book.git
cd aura-book
🎨 Frontend Setup
Navigate to the client:
cd client
Install dependencies:
npm install
Start the development server:
npm run dev
Build the production application:
npm run build
Run linting:
npm run lint
Preview the production build:
npm run preview
The frontend uses Vite for development and production builds.
🖥️ Backend Setup
Open another terminal:
cd aura-book/server
Install dependencies:
npm install
Create your environment configuration:
touch .env
Example:
PORT=5000
MONGO_URI=mongodb://127.0.0.1:27017
DB_NAME=aura_book
JWT_SECRET=your_super_secret_key
CLIENT_URL=http://localhost:5173
Start the development server:
npm run dev
Build the backend:
npm run build
Start the production server:
npm start
The backend currently exposes separate development, build, and production start scripts.
🔐 Environment Variables
Never commit secrets to Git.
Recommended environment variables include:
PORT=
MONGO_URI=
DB_NAME=
JWT_SECRET=
CLIENT_URL=
For production deployments, use your hosting provider's environment-variable management instead of committing .env files.
🔄 Application Flow
┌───────────────┐
│ Visitor │
└───────┬───────┘
│
▼
Browse Services
│
▼
Select Service
│
▼
Choose Stylist
│
▼
Choose Date/Time
│
▼
Check Availability
│
┌────┴────┐
│ │
Available Unavailable
│ │
▼ └──────► Choose Again
Create Booking
│
▼
Booking Confirmation
│
▼
Appointment
│
┌─────────┴─────────┐
▼ ▼
Stylist View Admin View
│ │
└─────────┬─────────┘
▼
Manage Appointment
🧠 Future Roadmap
Aura Book is designed to evolve into a complete commercial booking platform.
Potential future improvements include:
Real-Time Booking
- Socket.IO integration
- Live slot locking
- Instant availability updates
- Real-time booking notifications
Payments
- Stripe integration
- Local payment gateways
- Advance/deposit payments
- Payment verification
- Refund management
Notifications
- Email confirmations
- SMS reminders
- Appointment reminders
- Booking status notifications
Advanced Scheduling
- Recurring availability
- Staff breaks
- Holidays
- Time-off management
- Service-specific availability
- Conflict detection
Business Intelligence
- Revenue analytics
- Booking statistics
- Popular services
- Stylist performance
- Customer insights
- Monthly reports
Customer Features
- Customer profiles
- Booking history
- Favorite stylists
- Reviews & ratings
- Digital receipts
- QR-based appointment verification
🔒 Security
Security is an important part of the backend architecture.
Aura Book uses technologies and practices including:
- JWT-based authentication
- Password hashing with bcrypt
- HTTP security headers with Helmet
- CORS configuration
- Environment-based secrets
- Request validation
- Secure cookie/token strategies where applicable
- MongoDB/Mongoose schema validation
Production deployments should additionally use:
- HTTPS
- Secure cookies
- Rate limiting
- Strict CORS policies
- Strong JWT secrets
- Input sanitization
- Database access restrictions
- Proper secret management
📊 Scalability
The architecture is intentionally separated into frontend and backend applications, allowing each layer to evolve independently.
┌─────────────────────┐
│ CDN / Proxy │
└──────────┬──────────┘
│
┌────────┴────────┐
▼ ▼
React Client API Server
│
┌──────────┼──────────┐
▼ ▼ ▼
MongoDB Cache Workers
│
▼
Services
This makes it possible to introduce Redis, background workers, WebSockets, queues, and horizontal API scaling as the platform grows.
🧪 Development Philosophy
Aura Book aims to maintain:
- Strong TypeScript typing
- Clear separation of concerns
- Reusable React components
- Predictable state management
- Modular backend architecture
- Secure authentication
- Maintainable API design
- Production-oriented development practices
🤝 Contributing
Contributions, suggestions, and improvements are welcome.
1. Fork the repository
git fork https://github.com/ghsjulian/aura-book
2. Create a feature branch
git checkout -b feature/your-feature
3. Commit your changes
git add .
git commit -m "feat: add your feature"
4. Push your branch
git push origin feature/your-feature
5. Open a Pull Request
Please keep pull requests focused, descriptive, and easy to review.
📜 License
This project currently uses the license configuration defined in the individual project packages.
Before commercial distribution, a dedicated root-level license should be added to clearly define usage, modification, and distribution rights.
👨💻 Author
Ghs Julian
Full Stack Web Developer
GitHub:
https://github.com/ghsjulian
⭐ Support
If you find Aura Book useful or interesting, consider giving the repository a ⭐ on GitHub.
It helps support the project and encourages further development.
### ✨ Aura Book **Beautiful bookings. Smarter scheduling. Better experiences.** Built with ❤️ using React, TypeScript, Node.js, Express & MongoDB. **[GitHub Repository](https://github.com/ghsjulian/aura-book)**
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