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Student Dashboard
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Z-Code — Automated Assessment Platform

Z-Code is a MERN-stack web application designed to streamline programming assessments.
It provides contest-style workflows, automated grading pipelines, and structured practice arenas that deliver fast, fair, and consistent feedback while reducing instructor overhead.

🚀 Inspiration

Manual grading in programming courses is:

Slow
Inconsistent
Hard to scale

Z-Code was conceived to solve these pain points with:

Automated test-case evaluation
Real-time leaderboards
Practice & contest environments

The goal: fair, fast grading with actionable feedback that accelerates learning outcomes.

📚 What We Learned

Full-stack orchestration (MERN): Mapping MongoDB schemas & Express routes cleanly to React views for Admin, Lecturer, and Student roles.
Authentication patterns: Blending JWT sessions with Google OAuth, handling token lifecycles and secret storage.
Grading pipelines: Test-case–driven evaluation for deterministic I/O validation.
Operational concerns: Email delivery, Cloudinary asset storage, strict secret segregation (.env, .gitignore).
Learning UX: Dashboards, leaderboards, and filters that support motivation & iteration.

🛠️ How It Was Built

🔧 Stack & Structure

Backend (Node.js + Express)
- Organized into: config/, controllers/, routes/, models/, middleware/
- Controllers expose endpoints for contests, questions, users, and grading
- Middleware centralizes authentication and role-based access control
Database (MongoDB)
- Schemas for users, questions, contests, submissions, and results
- Efficient lookups for contest states & role-based visibility rules
Frontend (React + Vite)
- Organized into: components/, contexts/, hooks/, sections/, store/, pages/
- Pages cover: dashboards, contests (available/completed), practice, profile management
- Real-time feedback via toasts and leaderboard views

🔗 Key Integrations

Google OAuth — one-click sign-up/sign-in
Email Notifications — transactional messaging for key events
Cloudinary — avatar & asset storage

🧑‍💻 Developer Workflow

Clone the repository:

https://github.com/CodeCraftITSolutions/Z-Code.git
cd z-code

Install server dependencies:
```
cd server
npm install
```
Install client dependencies:
```
cd ../client
npm install
```

Configuration

Create a .env file in the server directory and complete the following:

PORT=4000
MONGO_URI=""
ACCESS_TOKEN=""
OAUTH_REFRESH_TOKEN=""
OAUTH_CLIENT_SECRET=""
OAUTH_CLIENTID=""
MAIL_PASSWORD=""
MAIL_USERNAME=""
CLOUD_NAME=""
CLOUD_KEY=""
CLOUD_KEY_SECRET=""

Create a cludinary api key and complete above .env for last three variables

Running the Application

Start the backend server:
```
cd server
npm run dev
```
Start the frontend server:
```
cd ../client
npm run dev
```
Open your browser and go to http://localhost:5173 to see the application running.

⚡ Challenges & Resolutions

Role Separation & Permissions
✅ Centralized authorization middleware with explicit capability checks

Secret Management
✅ Strict .env usage and .gitignore enforcement

Deterministic Automated Grading
✅ Pure input/output test cases (no side effects)

Contest Modeling at Scale
✅ Indexed fields & denormalized results collection for fast leaderboard reads

Immediate Feedback Loops
✅ Instant UI notifications + Completed Contests dashboard

🌍 Impact

Instructors → Predictable workflows, easier contest creation, less grading overhead
Students → Consistent, fast, actionable feedback that boosts learning
Admins → Clear oversight and smooth scaling