🏛️ Commons Master

Commons Master is a React-based web app for browsing and filtering Canadian federal legislation. It connects to a custom Express.js API to fetch real-time data about bills, including their status, session, and machine-learned topic categories.

🔗 Live App: https://commons-app.netlify.app

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✨ Features

• 📜 Browse active and passed Canadian parliamentary bills
• 🧠 Categories powered by uClassify machine learning
• 🧭 Filter by session, house (Commons or Senate), and legislative status
• 🗂️ Paginated results with performance-optimized loading
• 🧪 Connected to a PostgreSQL + Express.js backend via REST API

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🚀 Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Node.js (v18+)
• NPM

Installation

Clone the repository and install dependencies:

git clone https://github.com/mxmitch/commons-master.git
cd commons-master
npm install

Environment Configuration

Create a .env file in the root folder (optional if using localhost by default):

REACT_APP_API_BASE_URL=http://localhost:5000

Run the App Locally

npm start

Then visit http://localhost:3000 in your browser.

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🔌 API Integration

This frontend connects to the commons-api-master backend.

The API provides:

• GET /api/bills – Fetch bills with filters like status, session, category, and pagination
• GET /api/categories – Get list of available bill categories
• POST /api/auth/register – Register new users
• POST /api/auth/login – Login for user authentication

Make sure the backend server is running and accessible at the base URL defined in your .env.

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🗂️ Project Structure

src/
├── assets/             # Image files and Material UI css
├── components/         # UI components (cards, headers, layout)
├── helpers/            # Helper functions for validation
├── hooks/              # Loading Spinner
├── utils/              # Axios instance
├── views/              # Page components like Home
├── App.js              # React Router setup and global layout
├── index.js            # App entry point

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🧪 Testing (Coming Soon)

Testing will be added using:

• React Testing Library
• Jest
• Cypress (for integration testing)

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📸 Screenshots

Coming Soon

🛠️ Built With

• React
• Material UI (MUI)
• Axios
• React Router
• Netlify for deployment
• Express.js API
• PostgreSQL

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📜 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License — see the LICENSE file for details.

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🙌 Acknowledgements

• Forked from initial project fgfl/commons
• Parliamentary bill data from parl.ca
• Category classification powered by uClassify