BetterFinds Documentation

Welcome to the BetterFinds project documentation. BetterFinds is an Auction house website implemented in ASP.NET within the Computer Labs IV environment in the lective year 2023/2024.

Introduction

BetterFinds is a comprehensive online platform designed to facilitate auction-related activities. It provides a user-friendly interface for its users, making the process of buying and selling items at auctions convenient and efficient.

The main goals of BetterFinds include:

• Streamlining the auction process.
• Enhancing the user experience for both buyers and sellers.
• Providing a secure and transparent environment for online auctions.

Usage

Whether you are a buyer or a seller, BetterFinds offers a range of features to meet your auction needs. Here's a brief overview of how you can use BetterFinds:

• As a buyer:
  • Browse through a diverse range of auction listings.
  • Search for items by name or description and sort by alphabetical order, price or ending date.
  • Place bids on items you are interested in.
  • Monitor auction progress with live updates and receive notifications on bid updates in auctions you are participating in.
  • View your bidding history and track your activity, organized by auction.
  • Successfully win and pay for items you have bid on.
• As a seller:
  • Create and list items for auction, with the possibility of editing and deleting them.
  • Set the starting price and minimum bid increments for your items.
  • Track bidding activity with live updates and through our notifications system.
  • Successfully close auctions and fulfill transactions with winning bidders.

Note that BetterFinds users can be both buyers and sellers, and to take advantage of all the features it has to offer, you should create an account and log in, with most of the features being exclusive to registered users.

Explore the detailed documentation for specific information on how BetterFinds works under the hood.

Architecture

BetterFinds is built using the ASP.NET framework and C# programming language.

It uses the Razor Pages model, which is a page-based programming model that makes building web UI easier and more productive.

The BetterFinds project is organized into the following directories:

• Pages: Contains the Razor Pages that make up the BetterFinds website and their corresponding code-behind files.
• Utils: Contains utility classes used throughout the project.
• Services: Contains the asynchronous services used at the start of the application.
• Hub: Contains the SignalR hub used for real-time updates.

How to Run

To run BetterFinds, you should use the .NET Core 8.0 Runtime, but it may also work with other versions of .NET Core.

You will also need to have a MSSQL database server running on your machine. The database connection string can be configured in the appsettings.json file, located in the root directory of the BetterFinds project. Next you will need to configure the MSSQL server by running the T-SQL scripts located in the sql directory of the BetterFinds project.

To run the BetterFinds project locally from the source code, follow these steps:

1. Open a terminal or command prompt.
2. Navigate to the root directory of the BetterFinds project.
3. Run the following command:

   # Run from source
   dotnet run --environment Production
    
   # Alternatively, you can run from realease
   # Create a release build
   dotnet publish --configuration Release
   # Run the release build
   dotnet bin/Release/net8.0/BetterFinds.dll

4. Wait for the application to build and start. Once it's running, you can access BetterFinds by navigating to the specified address (usually http://localhost:5000).

Testing

BetterFinds uses the NUnit testing framework for automated unit testing. To run the tests, follow these steps:

1. Open a terminal or command prompt.
2. Navigate to the root directory of the Tests project.
3. Run BetterFinds locally using one of the methods described in the previous section.
4. Specify the connectionString on the Utils/Sql.cs file, similar to the one in the appsettings.json file mentioned previously.
5. Specify the url variable in the UnitTest.cs file located in the Tests project.
6. (Optional) Specify lt_username and lt_accesskey variables in the UnitTest.cs file if you want to load tests to LambdaTest.
7. (Otherwise) Uncomment the Selenium localhost driver in the UnitTest.cs file.
8. Run the following command:

   dotnet test

9. Wait for the tests to run. The results will be displayed in the terminal.

Authors

BetterFinds was developed by the following team of students:

• Flávia Araújo
• Miguel Carvalho