Survey Forms

A Google Forms clone: build a survey, share a public link, collect validated responses and view them in a table.

Stack

• Next.js 16 (App Router, Cache Components), Tailwind CSS v4
• react-hook-form + Zod, with @better-fetch/fetch as the typed client
• Hono API inside a Next.js route handler, validated with Zod
• Cloud Firestore is the primary database (forms, submissions, uploaded files)
• Prisma 7 + PostgreSQL is a local-only copy for development: it is written to and used as a read fallback only when NODE_ENV is not production and DATABASE_URL is set. Production needs only the Firebase variables.

The Zod schemas in lib/schemas/ are imported by both the browser and the API, so the same rules run in the form, in the API and before saving.

Setup

npm install
cp .env.example .env      # then fill in the values
npm run dev

# optional, local Postgres copy only:
npx prisma migrate dev

Variable	Purpose
DATABASE_URL	Optional. Local PostgreSQL copy for development; ignored in production
FIREBASE_PROJECT_ID, FIREBASE_CLIENT_EMAIL, FIREBASE_PRIVATE_KEY	Required. Firebase service account (Project settings, Service accounts). Write the key with \n for newlines
SYNC_TOKEN	Bearer token for the sync endpoints (local only)

Create a Cloud Firestore database in the Firebase console first.

Data flow

• Writes go to Firestore first. In local development the same data (same ids) is then copied to Postgres; a failed copy is logged, not returned.
• Reads come from Firestore; if that fails locally, they fall back to Postgres.
• /api/sync copies Firestore to local Postgres and removes Postgres forms that no longer exist in Firestore. It returns an error when local Postgres is disabled.
• Deleting a form deletes its Firestore submissions too.

API

Method	Path
GET, POST	/api/forms	list, create
GET, DELETE	/api/forms/:id	read, delete
GET, POST	/api/forms/:id/submissions	list a page, submit
POST	/api/files	upload a file (max 700 KB)
GET	/api/files/:id	download a file
GET	/api/sync/status	compare Firestore and local Postgres (token, local only)
POST	/api/sync	copy Firestore to local Postgres (token)

Every other method returns a JSON 405, and errors have the shape { error: { code, message } }.

Checks

npx prettier --check . && npx tsc --noEmit && npx eslint . && npm run build

Known limits

• There is no login: anyone with a form link can answer it, and the forms list and responses pages are public.
• Uploaded files live in Firestore documents, so each is limited to 700 KB.

License

MIT (c) 2026 Kasinadh Sarma