Michess

I started this project when I was still new to TS and full-stack development. Bad practices, confusing patterns, and messed up types are everywhere. Suggestions for improvements are very much welcome!

The client is currently being rewritten at the frontend-refactor branch (#24). Contributions to main that involve the frontend may get overwritten, but I'll try to cherry-pick those that can be applied to the new branch.

Yet another Chess web app. Live demo at ches.su.

play against other users in real-time
spectate and chat in ongoing games with other users
optional user accounts for tracking stats and game history
~~play solo against Stockfish~~ (wip)
mobile-friendly
... and more (view roadmap)

Built with Next.js 13, Tailwind CSS + daisyUI, react-chessboard, chess.js, Express.js, socket.io and PostgreSQL.

Development

Node.js 18 or newer is recommended.

This project is structured as a monorepo using pnpm workspaces, separated into three packages:

client - Next.js application for the front-end, deployed to ches.su via Vercel.
server - Node/Express.js application for the back-end, deployed to server.ches.su via Railway.
types - Shared type definitions required by the client and server.

Getting started

Install pnpm.
Install the necessary dependencies by running pnpm install in the root directory of the project.
In the server directory, create a .env file for your PostgreSQL database. You can try ElephantSQL or Aiven for a free hosted database.
```
PGHOST=db.example.com
PGUSER=exampleuser
PGPASSWORD=examplepassword
PGDATABASE=chessu
```
Run the development servers with pnpm dev.
- To run the frontend and backend servers separately, use pnpm dev:client and pnpm dev:server, respectively.
You can now access the frontend at http://localhost:3000 and the backend at http://localhost:3001.

Contributing

Please read our Contributing Guidelines before starting a pull request.

License

MIT