Meeting Creator

A "when2meet"-style group scheduling app. One person creates an event with a passcode and a valid date/day window; anyone with the Event ID and passcode can join and submit their own availability; the group can then see where everyone's availability overlaps.

• Backend: Django + Django REST Framework, PostgreSQL
• Frontend: Next.js (App Router) + TypeScript + Tailwind CSS

Project structure

.
├── events/               # DRF app: Event/Availability models, views, serializers
├── meeting_scheduler/    # Django project settings/urls
├── manage.py
├── requirements.txt
├── .env.example          # copy to .env and fill in real values
└── meet-creator/         # Next.js frontend
    └── app/
        ├── create/       # create an event
        ├── join/         # join an existing event
        ├── availability/ # pick dates/times, see group overlap
        └── lib/          # shared API client, session storage, time helpers

Prerequisites

• Python 3.11+
• Node.js 18+ and npm
• PostgreSQL 14+, installed and running

Backend setup

From the repo root:

python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate        # Windows (PowerShell): .\venv\Scripts\Activate.ps1
pip install -r requirements.txt

Copy the example env file and fill in real values:

cp .env.example .env

Variable	Description
SECRET_KEY	Django secret key. Generate one, don't reuse a committed value.
DEBUG	True for local dev.
DB_NAME	Postgres database name (default meeting_creator).
DB_USER / DB_PASSWORD	Postgres role and password.
DB_HOST / DB_PORT	Usually localhost / 5432.
CORS_ALLOWED_ORIGINS	Optional, comma-separated. Extra frontend origins to allow, on top of http://localhost:3000 / http://127.0.0.1:3000.

Create the database and role if they don't already exist (matching whatever you put in .env):

psql -U postgres -c "CREATE USER meeting_user WITH PASSWORD 'yourpassword';"
psql -U postgres -c "CREATE DATABASE meeting_creator OWNER meeting_user;"

Apply migrations and start the server:

python manage.py migrate
python manage.py runserver

The API is now at http://127.0.0.1:8000/ (DRF's browsable API works, so you can poke around /events/ directly in a browser).

Run the test suite:

python manage.py test events

Frontend setup

In a separate terminal:

cd meet-creator
npm install
echo "NEXT_PUBLIC_API_URL=http://127.0.0.1:8000" > .env.local
npm run dev

Open http://localhost:3000.

How it works

1. Create an event: a name, your username, a passcode, which days of the week are eligible, and a from/to time-of-day window. After creating, you get an Event ID and a shareable join link — send both the ID/link and the passcode to whoever you want to invite.
2. Join: anyone with the Event ID, a username, and the correct passcode can join from any device/browser.
3. Set availability: everyone picks specific dates (restricted to the event's allowed days and date window) and a time range per date.
4. Group availability: the app computes, per date, how many people overlap on each sub-interval of time, so you can see at a glance which windows work for the most people.

Known limitations

• The API has no authentication (authentication_classes = [] on both viewsets) — anyone who knows a username can act as that user.
• Passcodes are stored as plain text on the Event model, not hashed.
• There's no server-side validation that submitted availability actually falls inside the event's configured day/date/time window.

These are flagged deliberately rather than fixed, since they change how the app is meant to be used/deployed rather than being straightforward bugs — worth addressing before deploying this anywhere with real users.