BlogSphere

BlogSphere is a backend service for a blog application, designed to efficiently and securely handle content management using Java Spring Boot.

🚀 Features

• User Authentication: JWT-based authentication for stateless security
• Password Security: Bcrypt (12 rounds) for hashing 🔒
• Role-Based Access Control (RBAC): Manage user roles and permissions
• ORM: Java Persistence API (JPA) for database interactions
• API Documentation: Swagger for easy API exploration
• Deployment: Hosted on AWS Elastic Beanstalk

🛠 Tech Stack

• Backend: Spring Boot
• Database: PostgreSQL / MySQL
• ORM: Java Persistence API (JPA)
• Authentication: JWT-based authentication
• Password Security: Bcrypt hashing
• API Documentation: Swagger
• Deployment: AWS Elastic Beanstalk

📌 Installation & Setup

Prerequisites:

• Java 21
• Maven
• PostgreSQL / MySQL

Steps to Run Locally:

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/hanshulll/blog-app-apis.git
cd blog-app-apis

# Build the project
mvn clean install

# Run the application
mvn spring-boot:run

Environment Variables:

Create a application.properties file with following configs:

server.port=9090
#db configuration
spring.datasource.url=jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/blog_app_apis
spring.datasource.username=root
spring.datasource.password=password
spring.datasource.driver-class-name=com.mysql.cj.jdbc.Driver

📖 API Documentation

Once the application is running, API documentation is available at:

http://localhost:9090/swagger-ui/index.html

🏆 Challenges Faced

• Handling circular references in Spring Data JPA, which caused stack overflow errors.
• Deciding the best approach for storing images without using AWS S3.
• Staying consistent in completing the project without strict deadlines.

📚 Key Learnings

✅ Importance of consistency in personal projects. ✅ Handling bidirectional relationships in JPA using @JsonIgnore, @JsonManagedReference, @JsonBackReference. ✅ Exploring different image storage strategies in databases and cloud storage.

🏗 Future Improvements

• Implementing S3 storage for image handling.
• Adding unit tests and integration tests.
• Enhancing performance optimizations.

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Feel free to fork the repo and submit a pull request.

📩 Contact

For queries, reach out on LinkedIn: LinkedIn

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Made with ❤️ by Hanshul 🚀