RailTrack Manager

A railway infrastructure management application for tracking segments and incidents across a rail network.

Built as a technical portfolio project using a modern full-stack: Angular 21 on the frontend and Spring Boot 3 on the backend.

What it does

• Manage track segments — lines, types, operational status, maintenance history
• Track incidents — signal failures, geometry deviations, equipment malfunctions
• JWT-based authentication with role support
• Seeded with real Swiss railway data (Bern–Olten, Lausanne–Yverdon, Zürich Depot)

Tech stack

Layer	Technology
Frontend	Angular 21, Angular Material, standalone components
Backend	Spring Boot 3.5, Java 21, Spring Security + JWT
Database	H2 in-memory (development)
Secrets	HashiCorp Vault (spring-cloud-vault-config)
Build	Maven (backend), npm (frontend)
CI	GitHub Actions

Project structure

railtrack-manager/
├── backend/    # Spring Boot REST API
└── frontend/   # Angular SPA

Quick start

Requirements: Java 21, Node.js 18+, Maven, Docker (for Vault)

The backend reads jwt.secret and jwt.expiration from a HashiCorp Vault dev server — they are no longer stored in application.properties. Vault must be up and populated before the backend starts, or Spring Boot fails on spring.config.import=vault://.

# 1. Start a Vault dev server (in-memory, not for production)
docker run -d --name railtrack-vault \
  -e "SKIP_SETCAP=true" \
  -e "VAULT_DEV_ROOT_TOKEN_ID=mi-token-dev" \
  -e "VAULT_DEV_LISTEN_ADDRESS=0.0.0.0:8200" \
  -p 8200:8200 hashicorp/vault:latest

# 2. Seed the JWT secrets Spring Cloud Vault expects at secret/railtrack-backend
docker exec -e VAULT_ADDR='http://127.0.0.1:8200' -e VAULT_TOKEN='mi-token-dev' \
  railtrack-vault vault kv put secret/railtrack-backend \
  jwt.secret=404E635266556A586E3272357538782F413F4428472B4B6250645367566B5970 \
  jwt.expiration=86400000

# 3. Start the backend (port 8080)
cd backend
./mvnw spring-boot:run

# 4. Start the frontend (port 4200)
cd frontend
npm install
npm start

SKIP_SETCAP=true works around a CAP_SETFCAP permission error the official Vault image hits under Docker Desktop on Windows (WSL2 backend) — harmless in dev mode, where mlock isn't required anyway.

Vault's dev server is in-memory: all secrets are lost when the container stops. Re-run step 2 any time you recreate the container. The token (mi-token-dev) and URI (http://localhost:8200) must match spring.cloud.vault.token / spring.cloud.vault.uri in backend/src/main/resources/application.properties.

Open http://localhost:4200 — you will be redirected to the login page.

No user is seeded. DataLoader only seeds track segments and incidents, not users — the H2 database starts empty of accounts every time the backend restarts. You must create one yourself before you can log in, either:

• through the UI's registration form, or

• by calling the API directly:

  curl -X POST http://localhost:8080/api/auth/register \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
    -d '{"username":"admin","password":"admin123"}'

Registration always assigns the USER role — there is no endpoint to create an ADMIN. Since H2 is in-memory, this user is lost on every backend restart and must be recreated.

API

The backend exposes a REST API at http://localhost:8080/api.

Method	Endpoint	Auth	Description
POST	/api/auth/register	No	Create account
POST	/api/auth/login	No	Get JWT token
GET	/api/tracks	Yes	List track segments
POST	/api/tracks	Yes	Create track segment
PUT	/api/tracks/{id}	Yes	Update track segment
DELETE	/api/tracks/{id}	Yes	Delete track segment
GET	/api/incidents	Yes	List incidents
POST	/api/incidents	Yes	Create incident
PUT	/api/incidents/{id}	Yes	Update incident
DELETE	/api/incidents/{id}	Yes	Delete incident

H2 console available at http://localhost:8080/h2-console (JDBC URL: jdbc:h2:mem:railtrackdb).

CI

.github/workflows/ci.yml runs on every push and pull request against main:

• Backend — ./mvnw verify (Java 21) — compiles and runs the JUnit test suite.
• Frontend — npm ci, npm test -- --watch=false (Vitest) and npm run build.

Vault is not part of CI: the backend tests use their own test configuration and don't need spring.config.import=vault:// to run, so no Vault service is started in the workflow.