💸 Expense Tracker (Full-Stack + AWS)

A modern, full-stack expense management application built to explore the integration of PERN Stack (PostgreSQL, Express, React, Node.js) with AWS Cloud Infrastructure.

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🚀 The Mission

The goal of this project was to move beyond localhost and learn how to architect, deploy, and secure a web application in a professional cloud environment using Amazon Web Services.

🛠 Tech Stack

• Frontend: React.js (Vite), Tailwind CSS, Axios
• Backend: Node.js, Express.js
• Database: PostgreSQL (with JSONB support for flexible metadata)
• Cloud (In Progress): AWS EC2 (Compute), AWS RDS (Managed Database), VPC, Security Groups

📂 Project Structure

expense_tracker_aws/
├── frontend/     # React + Vite UI with Tailwind styling
├── backend/      # Node.js API & PostgreSQL connection logic
└── database/     # SQL schema blueprints and seed data

🏗 Local Setup

1. Database: Create a Postgres database named expense_tracker and run the script in database/schema.sql.

2. Backend:

   • cd backend

   • npm install

   • Create a .env file with your DB credentials.

   • npm run dev

3. Frontend:

   • cd frontend

   • npm install

   • npm run dev

☁️ AWS Deployment Roadmap

• Configure VPC and Security Groups for secure traffic.

• Launch and configure an EC2 instance for the Node.js server.

• Deploy a managed RDS (PostgreSQL) instance.

• Set up Environment Variables in the cloud.

• (Optional) Host React frontend via S3 & CloudFront.