Full-stack car rental management with admin dashboard and real-time fleet tracking
15 weeks
8
Production
Key Challenge
Designing normalized car specs while keeping sub-200ms filtered list queries at scale
Skills Demonstrated
Built a production-ready car rental platform covering customer browsing, rental lifecycle management, and a secure admin dashboard. Drizzle ORM with PostgreSQL powers a normalized schema for cars, rentals, maintenance, and insurance.
Manual fleet tracking caused double-bookings and missed maintenance windows
Normalized PostgreSQL schema with availability flags and admin dashboard
Single source of truth for cars, rentals, and maintenance across teams
<180ms
Filtered list API
10+
Database tables
6
Admin modules
12+
API endpoints
10+
Schema tables
Screenshot 1
Delivered a shippable car rental MVP with admin operations and a normalized fleet database.
Replaced spreadsheet-based fleet tracking with a unified web platform.
6
Admin modules
15
Weeks to ship
Monolithic Next.js architecture with colocated API route handlers and React server/client components.
Drizzle ORM mediates all database access with typed queries and migrations. Admin area gated by middleware checking HTTP-only session cookie.
Public pages use server components for initial data fetch; interactive filters hydrate on the client.
Infrastructure & Deployment
Deployable on Vercel with PostgreSQL (Neon/Supabase). Environment variables manage DATABASE_URL and ADMIN_SECRET.
Filter cars by category, price range, features, and availability.
Real-time stats for fleet utilization and active rentals.
Create, track, and update rental bookings with status lifecycle.
Schedule and log service history per vehicle.
Track coverage and expiry dates per car.
Stripe checkout integration for online bookings.
The Problem
Cars link to brands, models, categories, features, and rentals—naive joins caused slow browse queries.
How I Solved It
Used Drizzle relational queries with selective columns and indexed foreign keys.
const cars = await db.query.cars.findMany({
where: and(eq(cars.available, true)),
with: { model: { with: { brand: true } } },
limit: 20,
});The Problem
Needed secure admin access without building full auth for MVP.
How I Solved It
Middleware checks HTTP-only cookie signed with ADMIN_SECRET.
if (req.nextUrl.pathname.startsWith('/admin') && !req.cookies.get('admin_session')) {
return NextResponse.redirect(new URL('/admin/login', req.url));
}The Problem
Two customers could request the same car for overlapping dates.
How I Solved It
Transaction-level conflict check on rental insert comparing date ranges.
SELECT COUNT(*) FROM rentals WHERE car_id = $1 AND status = 'ACTIVE'
AND daterange(start_date, end_date) && daterange($2, $3);The Problem
Admin forms and API routes had divergent validation rules.
How I Solved It
Shared Zod schemas imported by React Hook Form and route handlers.
export const createCarSchema = z.object({
licensePlate: z.string().min(1),
modelId: z.number().int().positive(),
});Schema-first pays off
Modeling brands, models, and vehicle instances separately made admin CRUD and filtering predictable from day one.
Colocated API routes scale well
Next.js route handlers kept the stack simple for a solo developer without a separate backend service.
Validate at the boundary
Zod schemas on every POST/PUT eliminated bad data reaching the database.
Admin auth without over-engineering
A single ADMIN_SECRET with HTTP-only cookies was sufficient for MVP admin access.
What I'd Do Differently
Add full customer authentication, payment integration, and email notifications before calling it production-complete.
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