ForkTale - Recipe Sharing Portal

ForkTale is a recipe sharing portal PHP project built with PHP 8, MySQL and Bootstrap 5. Home chefs share family recipes with exact quantities, step timers and a photo. The admin checks every recipe with a 5-point checklist before it goes live. Food lovers browse, like, save, review and cook the recipes, see the Top Recipes of the week, and plan their meals with an automatic shopping list.

How it works

• A home chef registers, and the admin approves the chef account.
• The chef adds a recipe with ingredient rows, step rows (with timers) and a photo. The recipe is saved as Pending.
• The admin opens the recipe and approves it after ticking all 5 checklist points, or sends it back with a reason.
• Food lovers like and save recipes with one click (AJAX). The count changes without reloading the page.
• Top Recipes ranks recipes for this week, this month and all time. Score = likes x 3 + saves x 4 + reviews x 5, counted only inside the period.
• The servings scaler recalculates every ingredient quantity for 1 to 20 people.
• The meal planner (breakfast, lunch, dinner for 7 days) creates one scaled shopping list that can be printed.

Users

• Visitor: browse and search recipes, view Top Recipes and chef profiles.
• Food Lover: like, save, review, use the meal planner and shopping list.
• Home Chef: add and edit recipes, view recipe stats, reply to reviews.
• Admin: approve recipes and chefs, manage categories, moderate reviews, view reports, send notices, change settings.

Highlights

• 3 roles + admin, 40 pages, 13 MySQL tables with foreign keys and UNIQUE keys
• AJAX Like / Save, Top Recipes trending score, servings scaler, meal planner + shopping list
• Charts on the admin and chef dashboards (Chart.js), reports with date filter and print
• Validations on every form, both client side and server side (email, 10-digit mobile, password, recipe rows, photo type and size)
• Security: prepared statements, bcrypt passwords, CSRF tokens (forms and AJAX), role and ownership checks, safe photo upload
• Works fully offline on XAMPP; 28 flat dish pictures included
• Demo logins: admin / admin123, rahul@gmail.com / 123456 (food lover), priya@gmail.com / 123456 (home chef)

What you get

• Complete source code with SQL file and sample data (28 recipes, 7 chefs, 46 food lovers)
• Project report (PDF) with 8 diagrams, abstract, explanation with viva questions, and setup guide
• Screenshots and a README with a 10-minute demo script

Who can use this project

BCA, BSc CS / IT, MCA and Diploma final year students, and Engineering 2nd / 3rd year students for a micro project.

Frequently asked questions

Does it need internet? No. Everything runs offline on XAMPP. Is there a payment gateway? No. This project focuses on Like / Save, Top Recipes and the meal planner. Can I change the Top Recipes points? Yes, from Admin > Settings. Is documentation included? Yes: abstract, report, explanation with viva Q&A and setup guide, all as PDF.