Project · 05 / 07
Campus Marketplace
A student-to-student marketplace where textbooks, electronics, and campus essentials change hands without middlemen.
01 — Overview
What this project is
Campus Marketplace is a buy-and-sell platform built specifically for college students. The idea was simple: every semester, the same items cycle through campus — textbooks change hands, calculators get inherited, dorm furniture gets passed down. Most of this happens through scattered group chats and Instagram posts. There's room for something built for the use case.
The platform handles authentication, listings, real-time updates, and basic messaging. The interface is mobile-first because that's how students actually use these tools — between classes, on the go.
Built with React and Firebase — Firestore for the database, Firebase Auth for sign-in, all serverless. Got the project from idea to working prototype quickly because the stack handled the boring parts.
02 — Key Features
What it does
- Real-time listings that update across all users instantly when someone posts or sells an item
- Authentication tied to college email domains for trust
- Mobile-first responsive UI — designed for between-class browsing
- Search and filter across categories like textbooks, electronics, furniture
- Image uploads through Firebase Storage for product photos
03 — Tech Decisions
Why these tools
React for the frontend
Component-based architecture made it easy to keep the listing card, the listing grid, and the detail page all sharing data without duplication.
Firebase for the backend
Skipped server setup entirely — Firestore, Auth, and Storage covered everything I needed. For a project of this scale, building a custom backend would have been overkill and slowed shipping.
Tailwind for styling
Utility-first CSS meant I could iterate on the design quickly without writing custom CSS for every variant. The mobile-first responsive utilities mapped perfectly to the design constraints.
04 — What I built
My contributions
- Designed the data model and Firestore collections structure
- Built the complete React frontend including listing flows and search
- Set up Firebase Auth with email-based verification
- Implemented Firebase Storage integration for image uploads
- Deployed to Vercel and configured Firebase production environment