Help needed for my upcoming uni project presentation!
I’m working on a learning management system using PostgreSQL, Express, React, and Node.js. One key feature I’m stuck on is making certificates for students who finish courses.
Here’s what I want to do:
- Generate a certificate when a student completes a course
- Include student info (name, email) and course details (title, teacher, finish date) on the certificate
What’s giving me trouble:
I’ve looked into different ways to make certificates, but I’m not sure what works best with PERN. I thought there’d be lots of info out there, but I haven’t found anything that fits my needs exactly.
What I’m looking for:
- Tips on the best way to add certificate creation to my PERN app
- Any PERN-friendly tools that could make this easier
- Advice on good coding practices for this feature (I’m new to coding!)
I’d really appreciate any help or suggestions. Thanks!
Hey Ryan_Courageous! Your project sounds super interesting! 
Have you thought about using a template engine like Handlebars or EJS for your certificates? They’re pretty flexible and work well with Express. You could create a basic template, then inject the student and course data from your PostgreSQL database.
I’m curious, how are you tracking course progress in your app? That could be key for triggering the certificate generation at the right moment.
Also, have you considered adding a personal touch, like letting students customize their certificates a bit? Could be a fun feature!
Keep us posted on how it goes – I’d love to hear more about your project as it develops!
hey there ryan! i’ve dealt with similar stuff before. for certificates, try using a library like pdfkit or jspdf to generate PDFs. you can pull student and course data from your postgres DB, then use react to display a preview before generating. good luck with ur project!
In my experience with PERN stack projects, using Node.js in conjunction with PDFKit is an effective way to generate certificates. I found that designing a flexible certificate template and then populating it with student and course information from PostgreSQL allows for a dynamic solution. You can develop an API endpoint dedicated solely to certificate creation, integrate it with your React front end, and then either store the certificate on your server or in a cloud storage service. I encountered similar challenges in my projects and learned that careful error handling and robust security measures are essential.