Chatty Backend API

A full-featured social media and real-time chat backend API built with Node.js, Express, TypeScript, and Socket.IO. This API powers a modern social networking platform with features like user authentication, posts, reactions, comments, real-time messaging, notifications, and more.

Chatty Backend is a comprehensive REST API and WebSocket server that provides the backend infrastructure for a social media application. It handles:

• User Management: Registration, authentication, profile management
• Social Features: Posts, reactions (likes), comments, and follower/following relationships
• Real-time Chat: One-on-one messaging with Socket.IO
• Notifications: Real-time notifications for user interactions
• Media Management: Image uploads and storage with Cloudinary integration
• Email Services: Email notifications via SendGrid
• Job Queues: Background job processing with Bull/BullMQ
• Monitoring: API performance monitoring and health checks

• User registration and login with JWT authentication
• Secure session management with encrypted cookies
• Password reset and email verification
• User profiles with customizable avatars

• Create, read, update, and delete posts
• React to posts (likes, love, happy, sad, angry, etc.)
• Comment on posts with nested threading support
• Follow/unfollow other users
• View follower and following lists

• One-on-one chat functionality
• WebSocket-based real-time message delivery
• Message history and conversation lists
• Typing indicators and read receipts

• Real-time notifications for:
  • New followers
  • Post reactions
  • Comments on posts
  • New messages
• Mark notifications as read/unread
• Delete notifications

• Upload profile pictures and post images
• Cloudinary integration for cloud storage
• Image optimization and transformation
• Base64 and URL-based uploads

• Runtime: Node.js with TypeScript
• Framework: Express.js
• Database: MongoDB with Mongoose ODM
• Cache/Session Store: Redis
• Real-time: Socket.IO with Redis adapter

• Authentication: JWT (jsonwebtoken)
• Password Hashing: bcryptjs
• Security Headers: Helmet
• CORS: Cross-origin resource sharing
• Session Management: cookie-session
• HTTP Parameter Pollution Protection: hpp
• Request Compression: compression

• Email: SendGrid and Nodemailer
• Cloud Storage: Cloudinary
• Job Queues: Bull and BullMQ with Redis

• Linting: ESLint with TypeScript support
• Formatting: Prettier
• Testing: Jest with ts-jest
• API Monitoring: swagger-stats
• Process Management: PM2
• Logging: Bunyan

• Deployment: AWS (EC2, Load Balancer, Route53, ElastiCache, S3, CodeDeploy)
• IaC: Terraform configurations included

src/
├── app.ts                 # Application entry point
├── config.ts              # Configuration management
├── setupServer.ts         # Express server setup
├── setupDatabase.ts       # MongoDB connection setup
├── routes.ts              # Main route configuration
├── features/              # Feature modules
│   ├── auth/             # Authentication & authorization
│   ├── user/             # User management
│   ├── post/             # Post management
│   ├── reactions/        # Post reactions
│   ├── comments/         # Post comments
│   ├── followers/        # Follow/unfollow functionality
│   ├── chat/             # Real-time messaging
│   ├── notifications/    # User notifications
│   └── images/           # Image uploads
├── shared/               # Shared utilities and helpers
└── mocks/                # Test mocks

Each feature module typically contains:

• controllers/ - Request handlers
• routes/ - Route definitions
• models/ - Database schemas
• schemes/ - Validation schemas
• services/ - Business logic
• interfaces/ - TypeScript interfaces

• Node.js (v18 or higher recommended)
• MongoDB
• Redis
• Cloudinary account (for image storage)
• SendGrid account (for email services)

1. Clone the repository:

git clone <repository-url>
cd chat-api

2. Install dependencies:

npm install

3. Set up environment variables:

cp .env.development.example .env

Edit .env with your configuration:

DATABASE_URL=mongodb://localhost:27017/chatty_db
JWT_TOKEN=your_jwt_secret
NODE_ENV=development
SECRET_KEY_ONE=your_secret_key_1
SECRET_KEY_TWO=your_secret_key_2
CLIENT_URL=http://localhost:3000
REDIS_HOST=redis://localhost:6379
CLOUD_NAME=your_cloudinary_name
CLOUD_API_KEY=your_cloudinary_key
CLOUD_API_SECRET=your_cloudinary_secret
SENDGRID_API_KEY=your_sendgrid_key
SENDGRID_SENDER=your_email@example.com

4. Build the project:

npm run build

5. Start the development server:

npm run dev

The API will be available at http://localhost:5080

• npm run dev - Start development server with hot reload
• npm run build - Build TypeScript to JavaScript
• npm start - Start production server with PM2
• npm test - Run tests with coverage
• npm run lint:check - Check code for linting errors
• npm run lint:fix - Fix linting errors
• npm run prettier:check - Check code formatting
• npm run prettier:fix - Fix code formatting
• npm run redis - Start Redis Commander web UI for database management
• npm run seeds:dev - Seed database with test data

• POST /api/v1/signup - Register a new user
• POST /api/v1/signin - Login user
• GET /api/v1/signout - Logout user

• GET /api/v1/user/all/:page - Get all users (paginated)
• GET /api/v1/user/profile - Get current user profile
• GET /api/v1/user/profile/:userId - Get user profile by ID
• PUT /api/v1/user/profile - Update user profile

• GET /api/v1/post/all/:page - Get all posts (paginated)
• GET /api/v1/post/:postId - Get single post
• POST /api/v1/post - Create a new post
• PUT /api/v1/post/:postId - Update post
• DELETE /api/v1/post/:postId - Delete post

• GET /api/v1/post/reactions/:postId - Get post reactions
• POST /api/v1/post/reaction - Add reaction to post
• DELETE /api/v1/post/reaction/:postId/:reaction - Remove reaction

• GET /api/v1/post/comments/:postId - Get post comments
• POST /api/v1/post/comment - Add comment to post
• PUT /api/v1/post/comment/:commentId - Update comment
• DELETE /api/v1/post/comment/:postId/:commentId - Delete comment

• GET /api/v1/user/following - Get users you follow
• GET /api/v1/user/followers/:userId - Get user's followers
• PUT /api/v1/user/follow/:followerId - Follow/unfollow user

• GET /api/v1/chat/message/conversation-list - Get conversation list
• GET /api/v1/chat/message/user/:receiverId - Get messages with user
• POST /api/v1/chat/message - Send message
• DELETE /api/v1/chat/message/:messageId - Delete message

• GET /api/v1/notifications - Get all notifications
• PUT /api/v1/notification/:notificationId - Mark as read
• DELETE /api/v1/notification/:notificationId - Delete notification

• GET /api/v1/images/:userId - Get user images
• POST /api/v1/images/profile - Upload profile image
• POST /api/v1/images/background - Upload background image
• DELETE /api/v1/images/:imageId - Delete image

• GET /health - Health check endpoint
• GET /env - Environment information
• GET /fibo/:num - Fibonacci calculator (for testing)
• GET /queues - Bull Board queue monitoring UI

The application uses Socket.IO for real-time features:

• message - New message received
• message read - Message marked as read
• typing - User is typing

• notification - New notification received
• notification read - Notification marked as read

• post created - New post created
• post updated - Post updated
• post deleted - Post deleted

• user online - User came online
• user offline - User went offline

Run the test suite:

npm test

The project uses Jest for testing with coverage reporting. Test files are located alongside the source files with .test.ts extension.

• API Stats: Available at /api-stats (provided by swagger-stats)
• Queue Dashboard: Available at /queues (Bull Board)
• Health Check: Available at /health

The project includes Terraform configurations for AWS deployment:

• VPC and networking setup
• EC2 instances with Auto Scaling Groups
• Application Load Balancer
• ElastiCache for Redis
• Route53 for DNS
• S3 for storage
• CodeDeploy for CI/CD

See the deployment/ directory for infrastructure as code.

• JWT-based authentication
• Encrypted session cookies
• Password hashing with bcrypt
• HTTP security headers (Helmet)
• CORS protection
• HPP (HTTP Parameter Pollution) protection
• Request validation and sanitization
• Rate limiting via API gateway

1. Fork the repository
2. Create a feature branch
3. Make your changes
4. Run tests and linting
5. Submit a pull request

ISC

DevGbolade

For issues, questions, or contributions, please open an issue on GitHub.