PendlerPuls

PendlerPuls is a full-stack student project for checking a public transport journey and recording how reliable it is over time. It uses live journey data from Entur, keeps saved journeys in a relational database, and presents the result in a responsive React dashboard.

The project was chosen to fill a gap in my portfolio. My other projects already show Android, desktop, game, and static web development. PendlerPuls focuses on backend development, data modelling, external APIs, authentication, testing, containers, and CI.

Live demo: https://pendlerpuls.onrender.com

Current Features

• Search Norwegian stops and places through Entur's geocoder
• Preview a live journey with duration, expected delay, and transport lines
• Register and sign in with an HTTP-only cookie session
• Save journeys and collect reliability observations
• Review recent delay history, sample score, on-time rate, and trend for each saved journey
• Export saved journey observations as CSV
• Use a small native SwiftUI iPhone companion client against the same API
• Run locally with SQLite without installing a database server
• Switch to PostgreSQL through configuration
• Build the API and web client in GitHub Actions
• Deploy as a single public web service with the root Dockerfile and render.yaml

How It Works

1. The user searches for two Norwegian places in the React client.
2. The ASP.NET Core API sends the search to Entur with the required client identification header.
3. Entur returns the next journey. PendlerPuls reduces the large provider response to duration, delay, lines, modes, and expected times.
4. A signed-in user can save the origin and destination.
5. Each manual refresh stores one observation in the database.
6. The dashboard shows the latest result, average delay, sample count, on-time percentage, worst/best sample, a simple reliability score, and a recent observation chart.
7. The user can export the collected observations as CSV.

PendlerPuls does not calculate routes itself and does not sell tickets. Entur is the source of journey and real-time information.

Technology

Area	Choice
Backend	ASP.NET Core 10 minimal API
Frontend	React 19, TypeScript, Vite
iPhone client	SwiftUI
Data	Entity Framework Core, SQLite locally, PostgreSQL in containers
External data	Entur Geocoder and Journey Planner v3
Tests	xUnit and Vitest
Delivery	Docker Compose and GitHub Actions

.NET 10 is an active LTS release. The frontend deliberately uses Vite 6 because the development machine currently has Node 20.18, which is below the requirement of newer Vite releases.

Run Locally

Requirements:

• .NET 10 SDK
• Node.js 20 or newer

Easy Windows Start

Double-click:

START-PENDLERPULS.cmd

The launcher prepares missing dependencies, starts both parts of the app, waits until they are ready, and opens http://127.0.0.1:5173.

When finished, double-click:

STOP-PENDLERPULS.cmd

The first start takes longer because project dependencies may need to be installed. Later starts are faster.

Manual Start

The launcher above runs the following development setup for you:

dotnet restore
npm install --prefix .\apps\web
dotnet run --project .\apps\api

In a second terminal:

npm run dev --prefix .\apps\web

Open http://localhost:5173. The API runs on http://localhost:5050. SQLite data is stored in apps/api/pendlerpuls.db.

Run With PostgreSQL

Docker is optional for local development. When Docker is available:

docker compose up --build

The web app is then available at http://localhost:8080.

Put It Online

The root Dockerfile builds the React app and publishes the API as one ASP.NET Core service. In production the API serves both the static frontend and /api, which keeps cookies same-origin.

The current public deployment is:

https://pendlerpuls.onrender.com

The included render.yaml is a Render Blueprint for a small public deployment with a managed PostgreSQL database. See docs/deployment.md for the full checklist and docs/portfolio-integration.md for a simple project card to add to an existing portfolio website.

Repository Structure

apps/
  api/                 ASP.NET Core API and persistence
  web/                 React client
  ios/PendlerPuls/     SwiftUI iPhone companion app
tests/
  api/                 Backend unit tests
scripts/               One-command Windows start and stop scripts
docs/
  adr/                 Short architecture decision records
  api.md               HTTP endpoint reference
  architecture.md      Components and request flow
  data-model.md        Database entities and relationships
  development.md       Setup, workflow, and troubleshooting
  handoff.md           Current state and continuation guide
  operations.md        Configuration, logs, data, and deployment notes
  deployment.md        Public hosting and custom-domain checklist
  portfolio-integration.md  Copy for linking the app from a portfolio site
  project-brief.md     Scope, users, and success criteria
  reflection.md        What I learned and what I would improve
  security.md          Security choices and remaining risks
  testing.md           Test strategy and verification commands

Honest Limitations

• The project currently creates the database schema on startup. Versioned EF migrations are the next database task before a public production deployment.
• Reliability observations are collected when a signed-in user refreshes a saved journey. A scheduled background collector is planned.
• Authentication is intentionally small: email, PBKDF2 password hashing, and opaque server-side sessions. Password reset and email verification are not included yet.
• Entur data can be unavailable or incomplete. PendlerPuls shows an error instead of inventing a result.

Data Attribution

Transport data is made available by Entur under the Norwegian Licence for Open Government Data (NLOD). PendlerPuls identifies itself with the required ET-Client-Name request header.

Documentation

For a quick introduction, start with docs/project-brief.md.

For development or a new chat, read AGENTS.md and docs/handoff.md, followed by:

• Architecture
• API reference
• Data model
• Development guide
• Testing
• Operations and logging
• Security
• Reflection