BITAcademia - Official Academic Website of BIT Mesra

BITAcademia is the comprehensive academic platform designed and developed for BIT Mesra. This website aims to streamline and enhance the academic management experience for students, faculty, and administration. BITAcademia offers a wide array of features tailored to meet the diverse needs of the academic community.

Tools & Technologies Used

• Next.js: Builds and serves the frontend and hosts the API in a single app.
• React: For building the user interface.
• Express.js: For handling the server-side logic.
• MongoDB: For database management.
• Node.js: As the runtime environment.
• Multer: For handling multipart/form-data, especially file uploads.
• Cloudinary: For managing media assets.
• Tailwind CSS: For styling and responsive design.

Technical Overview

• A responsive academic MERN application built to enhance the management of students’ academic data.
• Provides dashboards to both students and faculty along with management tools enabling reporting and analytics.
• Implemented media handling through Cloudinary and Multer.
• Designed student routes for managing data and admin routes for analytic reporting.
• Developed RESTful APIs for creating, updating, deleting, and editing records.
• Implemented a cookie-based authentication system using JWT and bcrypt and facilitated data export using excel.js.

Getting Started

The frontend and backend live in one Next.js app, so there is a single package.json, a single .env and a single server to deploy.

pages/        Next.js pages (the React app is served for every non-API route)
src/          React frontend (components, react-router routes)
server/       Express API: routes, controllers, models, cron jobs, Socket.IO handlers
server.js     Entry point: Next.js + Express API (/api) + Socket.IO + cron on one port
public/       Static assets; runtime uploads go to public/uploads
scripts/      One-off maintenance and seed scripts

Local development

Requires Node.js 20.9+ and MongoDB.

cp .env.example .env      # fill in MONGODB_URI, JWT secrets, mail credentials, ...
npm install
npm run dev               # http://localhost:3000 (frontend + /api/v1 + Socket.IO)

Production

npm run build
npm start                 # serves everything on $PORT (default 3000)

Recommended: any host that runs a long-lived Node.js process (Render, Railway, Fly.io, a VPS, or docker compose up --build, see docs/DOCKER_SETUP.md). Use npm run build as the build command and npm start as the start command. Everything works there: pages, API, chat, cron jobs and uploads.

Vercel: import the repo with the Root Directory left empty and the Next.js preset. Pages and the REST API (pages/api/[...path].js) work, but serverless functions cannot keep a Socket.IO connection, run node-cron or keep files on disk, so live chat, the scheduled emails and uploaded documents do not work there.

NEXT_PUBLIC_* variables are inlined into the frontend at build time, so set them before npm run build.

Features

Dashboards

• Student Dashboard: Provides students with a personalized view of their academic journey, including courses, grades, and upcoming deadlines.
• Faculty Dashboard: Allows faculty members to manage their courses, track student progress, and communicate with students efficiently.

Student Profile Management

• Profile Updates: Students can easily update their personal and academic information, including:
  • Name
  • Branch
  • Section
  • Awards
  • Projects
  • Academic Details
  • Higher Education Information
  • Examination History
• Achievements and Activities: Students can showcase their extracurricular achievements and involvement in various activities.

Reporting and Analytics

• Custom Report Generation: The college can generate detailed reports on internships and placements, filtered by various criteria such as:
  • Students placed in specific companies (e.g., Google)
  • Sections and branches (e.g., Section C, CSE branch)
• Data-Driven Insights: Administrators can gain insights into student performance, placement trends, and more, helping in strategic planning and decision-making.

Faculty Tools

• Student Profile Access: Faculty members can access complete student profiles by entering the roll number, which includes all the updated details provided by the students.
• Advising and Mentoring: Facilitates better academic advising and mentoring by providing faculty with comprehensive student information.

Additional Features

• Secure Authentication: Ensures that only authorized users can access the respective dashboards and features.
• User-Friendly Interface: Designed with a focus on ease of use, making it simple for all users to navigate and utilize the platform effectively.
• Responsive Design: Optimized for various devices, ensuring a seamless experience on desktops, tablets, and smartphones.

Developers

Faculty Incharge - Prof. Suvendu Kanungo, Department of CSE, BIT Mesra.

1. Kushagra Sahay - Full Stack Developer (Team Leader)
2. Sumit Kumar - Full Stack Developer (Team Leader)
3. Akshat Tambi - Full Stack Developer
4. Parth Shresth - Frontend Developer
5. Ankit Verma - Backend Developer
6. Hritabhash Ray - Frontend Developer and Data Analyst

K23 Developers

1. Shaurya Aditya Verma - Full Stack Developer
2. Suryansh Dey - Full Stack Developer
3. Saquib Jawed - Backend Developer
4. Ankit Singh Sisodiya - Backend Developer
5. Yash Aggarwal - Frontend Developer