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Visit project1 Background and motivation
Shared equipment across student clubs and labs needs more than a catalogue. Organizers need to know what is available, who borrowed an item, and whether it should be returned. I worked on the Inventory Portal to connect these questions in one web interface, reducing the separation between stock records and the process of issuing equipment to students.
2 Data model
The application uses Next.js API routes, Prisma, and PostgreSQL. Its central records are users, inventory items, and issues. Users have identifying information such as a unique roll number; inventory records contain the item description, quantity, image, and whether the item is returnable. An issue links a borrower to an item and records the issue date, return deadline, and return state.
Making the issue a separate record is important because a catalogue entry describes an item type, while borrowing is an event involving a specific user. The relationship supports a borrower’s history and the status of outstanding equipment without encoding that history into the item description.
3 Checkout and return workflow
The interface supports creating and updating inventory, managing users, issuing items, and recording returns. Quantity updates accompany checkout and return operations so that the displayed availability follows the borrowing workflow. Returnable and non-returnable items need different handling: consuming an item should not create the expectation that it will reappear in stock.
The portal provides a responsive view for the people administering this process. Input validation, including unique roll numbers, helps prevent duplicate user records, while the issue model preserves the relationship needed to answer who holds an item and when it is due. These are small data decisions with direct consequences for the usefulness of the dashboard.
4 Engineering considerations
The main consistency requirement is that inventory availability and issue records describe the same state. A failed or repeated checkout must not silently produce a misleading quantity, and a return should not increase stock more than once. The report describes the portal’s workflow rather than claiming a measured reduction in equipment loss; its value comes from making those records and actions visible in one place.