📦 Stock_Ease Inventory Management System

Stock_Ease is a web-based inventory management system designed to track products, manage stock levels, monitor inventory health through alerts, and integrate with simulated weight sensors for real-time updates.

✨ Features

• Product Management: Maintain a catalog of products including details like name, barcode, quantity/weight tracking, minimum stock thresholds, expiry dates, and associated sensor IDs. Full CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) operations are supported.
• Transaction Tracking: Record manual stock adjustments (incoming/outgoing) associated with specific users and products.
• User Management: Basic user tracking with roles.
• Alerting System:
  • Automatically generates alerts when product levels (quantity or weight) fall below predefined thresholds.
  • Includes logic for restocking periods to prevent alert fatigue.
  • Distinguishes between unread (active) and read (historical) alerts.
  • Provides an alert history view.
• Weight Sensor Integration:
  • Tracks product levels based on data received from simulated external weight sensors via a dedicated API endpoint (/api/weightintegration/screendata).
  • Supports configuring products for either quantity-based or weight-based tracking.
  • Displays the last known weight reported by sensors.
• Real-time UI Updates: Utilizes SignalR to provide immediate visual feedback on the product list page when weight sensor data is updated, without requiring a page refresh.
• Reporting: Basic structure for generating inventory reports.
• Sensor Monitoring: Displays the status of connected sensors.

💻 Technology Stack

• Core Framework: ASP.NET Core 8 MVC
• Language: C# 12
• Database: Microsoft SQL Server
• Object-Relational Mapper (ORM): Entity Framework Core 8
• Frontend: Razor Views (CSHTML), HTML5, CSS3, Bootstrap 5, JavaScript
• Real-time Communication: ASP.NET Core SignalR
• Testing: MSTest (Unit Testing), T-SQL (Database Integrity Checks)
• Development Environment: Visual Studio 2022+, .NET 8 SDK

🏗️ Architecture

The application follows the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architectural pattern, promoting separation of concerns. It leverages ASP.NET Core's built-in Dependency Injection (DI) container for managing services like the DbContext, SignalR HubContext, and custom services (WeightSensorStatusService).

• Models: Define domain entities (Product, User, etc.) and the DbContext for EF Core interactions.
• Views: Razor views (.cshtml) render the user interface using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
• Controllers: Handle HTTP requests, interact with models and services, and select views to render.
• Services: Encapsulate specific business logic (e.g., WeightSensorStatusService for managing sensor state and restocking timers).

💾 Database Schema

(Note: The SensorId in Product conceptually links to an external sensor system.)

🚀 Setup & Running

1. Prerequisites:

   • .NET 8 SDK or later.
   • Microsoft SQL Server (Express, Developer, or Standard edition). Ensure the server instance is running.
   • (Optional) Python 3 for running the sensor simulation script.

2. Clone the Repository:

   git clone <repository-url>
   cd Stock_Ease

3. Configure Database Connection:

   • Open the Stock_Ease/appsettings.json file.
   • Locate the ConnectionStrings section:

     "ConnectionStrings": {
         "Stock_EaseContext": "Data Source=Cr33p3r;Initial Catalog=stock_ease;Integrated Security=True;Encrypt=False;Trust Server Certificate=True"
     }

   • The current connection string uses Integrated Security (Windows Authentication) to connect to the SQL Server instance named Cr33p3r and the database stock_ease.
   • If this configuration works for your environment, you can skip this step.
   • Otherwise, update the Data Source (server name/instance), Initial Catalog (database name), and authentication details (e.g., switch to SQL Server authentication with User ID and Password if needed) to match your SQL Server setup.

4. Apply Database Migrations:

   • Open a terminal or command prompt in the Stock_Ease directory (the one containing Stock_Ease.csproj).
   • Run the following command to create the database and apply the schema:

     dotnet ef database update --project Stock_Ease/Stock_Ease.csproj

   • (Note: If you don't have the EF Core tools installed, run dotnet tool install --global dotnet-ef first.)

5. Run the Application:

   • You can run the application using the .NET CLI:

     dotnet run --project Stock_Ease/Stock_Ease.csproj

   • Alternatively, open the Stock_Ease.sln file in Visual Studio and press F5 or click the "Start Debugging" button.
   • The application should be accessible at the URLs specified in Stock_Ease/Properties/launchSettings.json (typically https://localhost:xxxx and http://localhost:yyyy).

6. (Optional) Run Sensor Simulation:

   • Navigate to the Stock_Ease/external_scripts directory.
   • Ensure the API URL in ocr_sender.py matches the running application's URL (if different from the default).
   • Run the script:

     python ocr_sender.py

   • This will start sending simulated weight data to the application's API endpoint, triggering real-time updates if configured.

📸 Screenshots