360 Education - Free PECTAA/PCTB Textbooks & Notes

Welcome to the codebase for 360 Education, a web platform dedicated to providing free and easy access to official educational resources for students in Pakistan.

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Purpose

This project provides free access to official Punjab Curriculum & Textbook Board (PCTB) books, notes, past papers, and study materials for grades 9-12 (Matric & FSC), in both Urdu and English mediums. The goal is to create a centralized, user-friendly, and fast platform for students to find the resources they need for the 2025 new syllabus and beyond.

Key Features

• Comprehensive Resource Hub: Access textbooks, notes, past papers, and model papers for grades 9, 10, 11, and 12.
• Blazing Fast PDF Viewer: A custom-built, in-browser PDF viewer powered by PDF.js with features like zoom, page navigation, and fullscreen mode.
• SEO Optimized: Thoroughly optimized with meta tags, canonical URLs, Open Graph/Twitter cards, and a sitemap for maximum search engine visibility.
• Fully Responsive: A clean, mobile-first design that works beautifully on all devices, from desktops to smartphones.
• Dynamic Content: Books and notes are fetched dynamically from an external API, making content updates seamless without code changes.
• Search & Filter: Easily search for specific books or notes on the downloads page.
• Accessibility Focused: Built with accessibility in mind, featuring skip links, ARIA labels, and semantic HTML.
• Newsletter Subscription: Integrated with Brevo API for users to subscribe to updates.

Technology Stack

• Backend: Vanilla PHP
• Frontend: HTML5, CSS3 (with CSS Variables), Vanilla JavaScript
• Web Server: Apache (for .htaccess clean URLs)
• PDF Rendering: PDF.js
• APIs:
  • Content API: Fetches file lists from a private endpoint on 360muslimexperts.com.
  • Newsletter: Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) API for managing email subscriptions.

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• A web server with PHP support (e.g., Apache, Nginx).

Installation

1. Clone the repository to your local machine:

   git clone https://github.com/ibtisam-shahid-kh/edu-360ME.git

2. Place the project files in your web server's root directory (e.g., /var/www/html/ or htdocs/).
3. Create a config.php file in the root directory by copying the example structure below. This file is ignored by Git to protect your secrets.

   <?php
   // config.php
   
   // Brevo API configuration for the newsletter
   define('BREVO_API_KEY', 'YOUR_BREVO_API_KEY');
   define('BREVO_LIST_ID', YOUR_BREVO_LIST_ID); // This is a number

4. Access the project via your local server URL (e.g., http://localhost/edu-360ME/).

API Dependency

This website functions as a client-side application and does not host the PDF files or the file listings itself. All content (lists of books and notes) is fetched from a private API endpoint: https://360muslimexperts.com/panel/edu_api.php

This means that for the project to run, the live API must be accessible. The PDF files themselves are also hosted on the 360muslimexperts.com domain and are fetched via a proxy script.

Security

The application includes several security measures:

• PDF Proxy: The view-pdf.php script acts as a server-side proxy to fetch PDFs from the 360muslimexperts.com domain. This bypasses browser Cross-Origin (CORS) restrictions and prevents direct exposure of the source file path.
• Security Headers: Standard security headers like Content-Security-Policy, X-Frame-Options, and X-XSS-Protection are set to mitigate common web vulnerabilities.
• Input Sanitization: All user input (e.g., $_GET parameters) is sanitized using PHP filters to prevent XSS and other injection attacks.
• Secret Management: The config.php file, which contains API keys, is explicitly excluded from version control via .gitignore.

Project Structure

edu-360ME/
├── .htaccess            # config for clear links
├── index.php            # Homepage
├── books.php            # Lists books by grade
├── notes.php            # Lists notes by grade/subject
├── downloads.php        # Lists all available content
├── view-pdf.php         # The PDF.js viewer and proxy
├── sitemap.xml          # Sitemap for SEO
├── robots.txt           # Instructions for web crawlers
└── README.md            # This file

    includes
      ├── header.php           # Shared header component
      ├── footer.php           # Shared footer component (includes newsletter logic)
      ├── subscribe.php        # Handles newsletter form submission
      ├── helpers.php          # Utility functions (e.g., formatBytes)
      ├── config.php           # (You must create this) API keys and secrets
      ├── breadcrumb.php
    css
      ├── style.css
      ├── header-footer.css
      ├── view-pdf.css

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! If you have suggestions for improvements, please follow these steps:

1. Fork the repository.
2. Create a new branch (git checkout -b feature/your-feature-name).
3. Make your changes.
4. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add some feature').
5. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/your-feature-name).
6. Open a Pull Request.

Please adhere to the existing code style and keep SEO and accessibility in mind.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.

Contact & Support

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• Primary Contact: Ibtisam Shahid
• Organization: 360 Muslim Experts
• WhatsApp: +92 321 2584393