kinEvents

• 

  Kinevents

Inspiration

What it does

Inspiration

Every family has the same problem: birthdays get forgotten, gatherings go unplanned, and group chats become chaos. We wanted a private, invite-only space where a family could manage their own events without relying on public social platforms or messy spreadsheets.

What It Does

KinEvents is a full-stack family event management platform with:

• Access control — Admins approve/reject join requests; users get JWT tokens on approval
• Events — Create, RSVP, and manage custom or birthday events with image and online link support
• Birthdays — Automatic birthday tracking, upcoming previews, and reminder notifications
• Notifications — In-app and email notifications for events, RSVPs, birthdays, and access changes
• Family chat — Paginated group messaging with read receipts and soft-delete
• Admin dashboard — User management, role promotion, site content editing, email logs, and data cleanup
• Email system — Transactional emails via Gmail/Resend with templated HTML layouts and retry support

How We Built It

Backend (Node.js / TypeScript):

• Express app deployed as an AWS Lambda function via SAM
• MongoDB single-document datastore with in-memory fallback for local dev
• JWT authentication with live DB role verification on every request (withAuth middleware)
• Zod input validation on all routes
• Modular service layer: authService, eventService, birthdayService, notificationService, emailService
• 100+ Jest tests covering middleware, handlers, services, and integration flows

Frontend (React / TypeScript):

• Vite + Tailwind CSS v4 with a warm coral/mint design system
• TanStack Query for server state, Zustand for auth persistence
• React Router v6 with protected and admin-only route guards
• Mobile-first layout with a bottom nav, collapsible sidebar, and smooth Framer Motion transitions
• Silent re-authentication on token expiry with automatic redirect on hard failures

Challenges

• JWT staleness — We needed live DB lookups on every authenticated request so that role changes take effect immediately without requiring a new token. This meant the withAuth middleware always cross-checks the JWT payload against the database.
• Single-document MongoDB — Storing all app data in one document simplifies queries but required careful serialization, upsert logic, and a write queue to avoid race conditions across Lambda invocations.
• Route ordering in Express — Static paths like /api/users/promote had to be registered before dynamic ones like /api/users/:id, which required explicit ordering in app.ts.
• Email reliability — Building a transport-agnostic email layer that supports Gmail app passwords, Resend, graceful degradation, retry tracking, and templated HTML without a dedicated email service was a significant undertaking.

What We Learned

• Designing auth middleware that enforces live role changes without sacrificing performance
• Building a full transactional email system with templates, logs, and retries from scratch
• Making a serverless app feel stateful through careful DB initialization and persistence strategies
• The value of integration tests that exercise the full API against real data

What's Next

• Push notification support (Web Push / Expo)
• Password-based login option
• Real-time chat with WebSockets
• Photo album / memory sharing per event
• Mobile app (React Native) ## How I built it

Challenges I ran into

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

What I learned

What's next for kinEvents

Built With

• aws-lambda
• express.js
• framer-motion
• jwt
• mongodb
• node.js
• nodemailer
• react
• sendgrid
• tailwind-css
• tanstack-query
• typescript
• vercel
• zod
• zustand