Merge pull request #16 from aaronpo97/read-me

create readme

README.md

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+# The Biergarten App
+
+## About
+
+The Biergarten App is a web application designed for beer lovers to share their favorite brews and breweries with like-minded people online.
+
+I'm using Next.js, Prisma, and CockroachDB to build this app, and I'm motivated to learn more about these technologies while exploring my passion for beer.
+
+I've also incorporated different APIs into the application, such as the Cloudinary API for image uploading and SparkPost for email services.
+
+To handle serverless functions (API routes), I use the next-connect package.
+
+On the client-side, I'm using React, Tailwind CSS, and DaisyUI for styling to create a visually appealing and user-friendly interface.
+
+I'm sharing my code publicly so that others can learn from it and use it as a reference for their own projects.
+
+### Some beer terminology
+
+In this app you will encounter various beer related terms. Here is a list of terms used in this app and their definitions.
+
+#### ABV
+
+[Alcohol by volume](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_by_volume) (abbreviated as ABV) is a standard measure of how much alcohol (ethanol) is contained in a given volume of an alcoholic beverage (expressed as a volume percent).
+
+#### IBU
+
+The [International Bitterness Units](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_measurement#Bitterness) scale, or IBU, is used to approximately quantify the bitterness of beer. This scale is not measured on the perceived bitterness of the beer, but rather the amount of a component of beer known as iso-alpha acids.
+
+## How to run locally
+
+### Prerequisites
+
+Before you can run this application locally, you will need to have the following installed on your machine:
+
+- [Node.js](https://nodejs.org/en/)
+- [npm (version 6 or higher)](https://www.npmjs.com/get-npm)
+
+You will also need to create a free account with the following services:
+
+- [Cloudinary](https://cloudinary.com/users/register/free)
+- [SparkPost](https://www.sparkpost.com/)
+- [CockroachDB](https://www.cockroachlabs.com/)
+
+### Setup
+
+1. Clone this repository and navigate to the project directory.
+
+```bash
+git clone https://github.com/aaronpo97/the-biergarten-app
+cd the-biergarten-app
+```
+
+2. Run the following command to install the dependencies.
+
+```bash
+npm install
+```
+
+3. Run the following script to create a `.env` file in the root directory of the project and add the following environment variables. Update these variables with your own values.
+
+```bash
+echo "BASE_URL=
+
+CLOUDINARY_CLOUD_NAME=
+CLOUDINARY_KEY=
+CLOUDINARY_SECRET=
+
+CONFIRMATION_TOKEN_SECRET=
+SESSION_SECRET=
+
+DATABASE_URL=
+NODE_ENV=
+
+SPARKPOST_API_KEY=
+SPARKPOST_SENDER_ADDRESS=" > .env
+
+```
+
+## Explanation of environment variables
+
+- `BASE_URL` is the base URL of the application.
+  - For example, if you are running the application locally, you can set this to `http://localhost:3000`.
+- `CLOUDINARY_CLOUD_NAME`, `CLOUDINARY_KEY`, and `CLOUDINARY_SECRET` are the credentials for your Cloudinary account.
+  - You can create a free account [here](https://cloudinary.com/users/register/free).
+- `CONFIRMATION_TOKEN_SECRET` is the secret used to sign the confirmation token used for email confirmation.
+  - You can generate a random string using the`openssl rand -hex 32` command.
+- `SESSION_SECRET` is the secret used to sign the session cookie.
+  - Use the same command as above to generate a random string.
+- `DATABASE_URL` is the URL of your CockroachDB database.
+  - You can find this in the connection string in the CockroachDB Admin UI.
+- `NODE_ENV` is the environment in which the application is running.
+  - You can set this to `development` or `production`.
+- `SPARKPOST_API_KEY` is the API key for your SparkPost account.
+  - You can create a free account [here](https://www.sparkpost.com/).
+- `SPARKPOST_SENDER_ADDRESS` is the email address that will be used to send emails.
+  - This email address must be verified in your SparkPost account.
+
+4. Initialize the database and run the migrations.
+
+```bash
+npx prisma generate
+npx prisma migrate dev --name init
+```
+
+5. Seed the database with some initial data.
+
+```bash
+npm run seed
+```
+
+6. Start the application.
+
+```bash
+npm run dev
+```
+
+# License
+
+The Biergarten App is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0. This means that anyone is free to use, modify, and distribute the code as long as they also distribute their modifications under the same license.
+
+I encourage anyone who uses this code for educational purposes to attribute the original author (i.e. me) and provide a link to the original repository.
+
+By contributing to this repository, you agree to license your contributions under the same license as the project.
+
+If you have any questions or concerns about the license, please feel free to reach out to me..
+
+I hope that this project will be useful to other developers and beer enthusiasts who are interested in learning about web development with Next.js, Prisma, CockroachDB, and other technologies.