NOVAMED Clinic Appointment Booking System

A full-stack clinic appointment booking application for an imaginary clinic group called NOVAMED, supporting patients, doctors, desk staff, and admin roles. Built with an ASP.NET Core 8 backend and a Next.js 14 frontend.

🏗️ Application Structure

The project is split into two parts:

• BACK-END/ — ASP.NET Core 8 + Entity Framework Core + MySQL. Handles all business logic, REST API routes, and database operations.
• front_end/ — Next.js 14 + Tailwind CSS. The user-facing interface, including an admin panel.

🚀 Features

Public pages

• Book Appointment (/) — create a new appointment, restricted to working hours and future dates only, with booking rules displayed on the page
• Search Doctor (/search) — search doctors by name or view all doctors
• Appointment Calendar (/calendar) — monthly and daily calendar view via DayPilot
• About Us, Contact, Privacy Policy — supporting pages, including a dummy contact form

Admin panel (/admin)

• Full CRUD management for Clinics, Doctors, Patients, Appointments, and Specialities
• Business rule enforced: a patient with an existing appointment cannot be deleted
• ⚠️ No authentication/authorization is implemented yet — this is a known limitation, with role-based access control planned to comply with personal data protection requirements

🛠 Tech Stack

Backend: ASP.NET Core 8, Entity Framework Core, MySQL, Swagger, LINQ, CORS Frontend: Next.js 14, React 18, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, @daypilot/daypilot-lite-react (calendar), lucide-react (icons), animate.css

📂 Project Structure

Clinic-Appointment-FullStack/
├── BACK-END/
│   ├── Controllers/
│   │   ├── AppointmentsController.cs
│   │   ├── ClinicController.cs
│   │   ├── DoctorsController.cs
│   │   ├── PatientsController.cs
│   │   ├── SearchDoctorController.cs
│   │   └── SpecialitiesController.cs
│   ├── DTOs/            # Response shaping, avoids entity leakage
│   ├── Models/
│   └── Migrations/
└── front_end/
    └── app/
        ├── admin/
        │   ├── clinics/ doctors/ patients/ appointments/ specialities/
        ├── search/
        ├── calendar/
        ├── aboutus/ contact/ privacy/

📖 API Endpoints Overview

Resource	Endpoints
Appointments	GET/POST /api/appointments, GET/PUT/DELETE /api/appointments/{id}
Patients	GET/POST /api/patients, GET/PUT/DELETE /api/patients/{id}
Doctors	GET/POST /api/doctors, GET/PUT/DELETE /api/doctors/{id}
Clinics	GET/POST /api/clinics, GET/PUT/DELETE /api/clinics/{id}
Specialities	GET/POST /api/specialities, GET/PUT/DELETE /api/specialities/{id}
Doctor Search	POST /api/search/doctors — search by first/last name, no auth required

All endpoints are documented and testable via Swagger UI.

Sample search request body:

{
  "firstName": "John",
  "lastName": "Doe"
}

▶️ Getting Started

Option A — Automatic startup (recommended)

The root package.json uses concurrently to run both backend and frontend together:

{
  "scripts": {
    "dev": "concurrently -k -n FRONT,BACK -c green,blue \"npm run front\" \"npm run back\"",
    "front": "npm --prefix front_end run dev",
    "back": "dotnet watch run --project BACK-END"
  }
}

From the root folder:

npm install
npm run dev

Frontend logs appear in green, backend logs in blue.

Option B — Manual startup

Backend:

cd BACK-END
dotnet build

Create appsettings.json (see appsettings.json.sample.txt):

{
  "ConnectionStrings": {
    "DefaultConnection": "Server=localhost;Database=medicalclinics;user=root;password=yourpassword"
  },
  "AllowedHosts": "*"
}

Then:

dotnet ef database update
dotnet run

Swagger UI: https://localhost:<port>/swagger (default port 5196 — verify in launchSettings.json)

Frontend:

cd front_end
npm install

Create .env.local with the backend API URL, then:

npm run dev

⚠️ Make sure the backend is running before starting the frontend.

🔐 CORS Configuration

All origins, headers, and methods are currently allowed (development setting):

builder.Services.AddCors(options => {
    options.AddPolicy("AllowAll", builder => {
        builder.AllowAnyOrigin().AllowAnyHeader().AllowAnyMethod();
    });
});

📝 Notes

• Only non-sensitive personally identifiable information is stored
• DTOs shape all API responses to avoid leaking EF Core entities directly
• XML comments are included throughout for Swagger documentation
• Application name, placeholder text, and images were generated with ChatGPT and have no relation to any real clinic

📚 References

1. Noroff Learning Resources — Front-End Technologies (Module 4), Back-End Technologies
2. ChatGPT (OpenAI) — dummy text, company name, and placeholder visuals
3. The author's own Movie Theater project — reused for Next.js component structure
4. DayPilot — appointment calendar component