ExamTopics Engine

This project is a comprehensive solution for practicing certification exams. It includes a scraper to download exam questions and a web application (Exam Trainer) to practice them.

Solution Overview

The solution consists of two main parts:

1. Exam Scraper: A tool to download exam questions from ExamTopics.
2. Exam Trainer: A local web application to practice the downloaded exams.

Quick Start with GitHub Codespaces

The easiest way to get started is using GitHub Codespaces:

1. Click the green Code button on the repository page
2. Select Codespaces → Create codespace on main
3. Once the codespace is ready, open a terminal and run:

   cd exam-trainer
   ./start.sh

4. When prompted, click Open in Browser for port 5173
5. Start practicing your exams!

Note: The frontend uses a Vite proxy to communicate with the backend, so you only need to access the frontend URL (port 5173).

Prerequisites

• Node.js (Latest LTS version recommended)

Installation (Local Development)

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone <repository_url>
   cd examtopics-engine

2. Install dependencies for the backend:

   cd exam-trainer/backend
   npm install

3. Install dependencies for the frontend:

   cd ../frontend
   npm install

Usage

Getting Exams

To download exams in Markdown format, we recommend using the examtopics-downloader tool.

Repository: https://github.com/thatonecodes/examtopics-downloader.git

Follow the instructions in that repository to download the exams you need. Once downloaded, place the Markdown files in the exams directory of this project.

Running the Exam Trainer

You can start both the backend and frontend services using the provided start script.

1. Navigate to the exam-trainer directory:

   cd exam-trainer

2. Run the start script:

   ./start.sh

This will:

• Install all dependencies automatically
• Launch the backend server on port 3001
• Launch the frontend application on http://localhost:5173

Open your browser and navigate to the frontend URL to start practicing!

Project Structure

• exams/: Directory to store downloaded exam Markdown files.
• exam-trainer/: Contains the source code for the unified application.
  • backend/: Node.js/Express backend.
  • frontend/: React/Vite frontend.
  • start.sh: Script to run both services simultaneously.

Troubleshooting

Codespaces: "No exams found"

Make sure the backend is running. The frontend proxies API requests through Vite, so both services must be running.

Port already in use

Kill existing processes:

pkill -f "node server.js"
pkill -f "vite"

Then run ./start.sh again.