Online Event Planning System

A web-based event planning and advertising system built as a 2nd year group project. Registered users can create, edit and delete events, publish advertisements for them, and visitors can browse and search everything without an account. A separate administrator panel allows the whole system to be managed.

The application is written with Java Servlets, JSP, JDBC and MySQL and is packaged as a WAR file for Apache Tomcat.

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Features

Public website

• Home page with upcoming events, recent advertisements and event categories
• Browse, search and filter events by keyword, category and time period
• Browse and search advertisements
• Detailed event and advertisement pages
• About Us and Contact Us pages (messages are stored in the database)
• Responsive layout for desktop, tablet and mobile screens

Registered users

• Register and login with a username or email address
• Personal dashboard with event and advertisement statistics
• Create, edit and delete own events (with optional image upload)
• Create, edit and delete own advertisements (with optional image upload)
• Link an advertisement to one of the user's events and fill in its details automatically
• View and manage only their own records

Administrator

• Separate administrator login
• Dashboard with system statistics and recent activity
• View all registered users
• Add, edit and delete any event
• View and delete any advertisement
• Add, rename and delete event categories
• Read and delete contact messages
• View the public website while logged in as an administrator

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Technologies

Layer	Technology
Language	Java 11+
Web	Java Servlet 4.0, JSP, JSTL-free scriptlets
Database	MySQL 8
Access	JDBC with PreparedStatement
Build	Apache Maven (WAR packaging)
Server	Apache Tomcat 9 (Java EE 8 / javax.*)
Front end	HTML5, CSS3, vanilla JavaScript

Important: this project uses the javax.servlet namespace, so it must be deployed on Tomcat 9 (or another Java EE 8 container). Tomcat 10+ uses jakarta.servlet and will not work without migration.

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Project structure

Online-Event-Planning-System/
├── database/
│   └── online_event_planning_system.sql   # schema + default admin + categories
├── src/main/java/com/eventplanner/
│   ├── dao/          # JDBC data access classes
│   ├── filter/       # encoding and authentication filters
│   ├── model/        # Java beans
│   ├── servlet/      # controllers
│   └── util/         # connection, validation, upload and password helpers
├── src/main/resources/db.properties       # database connection settings
├── src/main/webapp/
│   ├── css/style.css                      # main stylesheet
│   ├── js/main.js                         # form and UI enhancements
│   ├── images/                            # logo, banner and placeholders
│   ├── uploads/                           # uploaded images (created at runtime)
│   ├── WEB-INF/views/                     # JSP pages (public, user, admin, errors)
│   ├── WEB-INF/web.xml                    # welcome file, error pages, session config
│   └── index.jsp                          # redirects to /home
└── pom.xml

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Setup instructions

1. Create the database

Start MySQL and run the SQL script:

mysql -u root -p < database/online_event_planning_system.sql

The script creates the online_event_planning_system database, all tables, eight default event categories and the default administrator account.

2. Configure the database connection

Edit src/main/resources/db.properties:

db.url=jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/online_event_planning_system?useSSL=false&allowPublicKeyRetrieval=true&serverTimezone=UTC&characterEncoding=UTF-8
db.username=root
db.password=root

The values can also be supplied through the DB_URL, DB_USERNAME and DB_PASSWORD environment variables, which override the properties file.

3. Build the WAR file

mvn clean package

The WAR file is created at:

target/online-event-planning-system.war

4. Deploy on Apache Tomcat 9

Copy the WAR file into the Tomcat webapps folder and start Tomcat:

cp target/online-event-planning-system.war "$CATALINA_HOME/webapps/"
"$CATALINA_HOME/bin/startup.sh"

On Windows:

Copy-Item target\online-event-planning-system.war "$env:CATALINA_HOME\webapps\"
& "$env:CATALINA_HOME\bin\startup.bat"

Then open:

http://localhost:8080/online-event-planning-system/

5. Run from an IDE (optional)

1. Import the project as a Maven project.
2. Add Apache Tomcat 9 as the server.
3. Deploy the artifact online-event-planning-system:war exploded.
4. Open http://localhost:8080/online-event-planning-system/.

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Default login details

Administrator:

Field	Value
Username	admin
Password	admin123

There are no demo user accounts. Register a new account from the Register page to test the user features.

Change the administrator password before using the system outside a classroom/demo environment.

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Database tables

Table	Purpose
admins	Administrator login accounts
users	Registered user accounts
categories	Event categories
events	Events created by users and administrators
advertisements	Advertisements published by registered users
contact_messages	Messages submitted through the Contact Us page

Passwords are stored as salted SHA-256 hashes in the format salt:hash. Uploaded images are stored in src/main/webapp/uploads/ and the file name is saved in the database.

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Useful URLs

URL	Description
/	Redirects to the home page
/home	Public home page
/events	Event list, search and filters
/events?id=1	Event details
/advertisements	Advertisement list and search
/advertisements?id=1	Advertisement details
/about	About Us
/contact	Contact Us
/login /register	User authentication pages
/user/dashboard	User dashboard (login required)
/admin/login	Administrator login
/admin/dashboard	Administrator dashboard

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Validation and security notes

• All SQL statements use PreparedStatement parameters.
• Output written into JSP pages is escaped with WebUtil.escape.
• User passwords are never stored in plain text.
• Session IDs are regenerated after login.
• Authentication filters protect /user/* and /admin/*.
• Users can only edit or delete their own events and advertisements.
• Uploaded files are limited to JPG, PNG and GIF, 5 MB maximum.
• CSRF protection is not implemented because this is a university project; add tokens before using the system for real public traffic.

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Troubleshooting

Database configuration file db.properties was not found Make sure src/main/resources/db.properties is included in the build (run mvn clean package).

Access denied for user 'root'@'localhost' Update db.username / db.password in db.properties or set the DB_USERNAME and DB_PASSWORD environment variables.

Unknown database 'online_event_planning_system' Run database/online_event_planning_system.sql again.

Uploaded images do not appear Check that the Tomcat process can write to the deployed uploads folder. When the WAR is not exploded, the application automatically falls back to a folder inside the system temporary directory and logs a warning.

Pages look unstyled Confirm that src/main/webapp/css/style.css and src/main/webapp/js/main.js are present in the deployed application and that the context path is correct.

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License

This project was created for educational purposes as part of a 2nd year group project. You may use and modify it for learning.