A cloud-native, microservices-based digital magazine built for organisations and universities. It provides a centralised hub for non-work updates, news, and events; combining secure authentication, structured publishing, moderation, and real-time engagement without cluttering email channels.
Modern institutions struggle to balance information sharing and focus. Surrey-Horizon solves this by creating a private, customisable magazine platform that lets users share posts, read curated content, and engage interactively; all within a moderated, secure environment.
Surrey-Horizon follows a distributed microservices architecture designed for scalability, reliability, and modular development. Each service handles a focused responsibility and communicates through REST APIs secured by a central authentication layer.
The following diagrams illustrate the internal structure and data flow within each major microservice, showing how components interact and integrate across the platform.
1. Authentication/Authorisation Microservice
- Implements Google OAuth 2.0 via NestJS middleware.
- Manages identity, sessions, and role-based access control (Admin, Moderator, User).
- Deployed as a serverless service on AWS Lambda via API Gateway.
2. Independent Functional Microservices
- Blog Service: Handles post creation and media uploads to AWS S3.
- Magazine Scheduler: Uses cron jobs to release magazines at fixed times.
- Admin/Moderation: Enables moderators to review, approve, or reject content and manage roles.
- Likes & Comments: Provides interactive engagement APIs.
- Notification Service: Uses Django Channels and Redis (ElastiCache) for real-time push notifications.
3. Shared Resources
- PostgreSQL as a central database ensuring data integrity and high availability.
- Redis for pub/sub messaging and instant user updates.
- Dockerised services running on AWS EC2 instances with load-ready configuration.
4. Frontend
- Built with Vue 3, Vuetify, and Vue Router.
- Communicates with backend microservices via REST and WebSocket APIs.
- Implements a clean SPA experience with secure session storage.
| Layer | Technologies |
|---|---|
| Frontend | Vue 3, Vuetify, Vue Router |
| Backend | NestJS, Django, Flask, Node.js |
| Authentication | Google OAuth 2.0, JWT, Role-Based Access |
| Database & Cache | PostgreSQL, Redis (AWS ElastiCache) |
| Storage | AWS S3 |
| Deployment | AWS EC2, AWS Lambda, API Gateway, Docker |
| CI/CD | Netlify (frontend), GitHub Flow, Docker Compose |
| Testing | Unit Tests (Pytest/Jest), planned E2E automation |
- Google OAuth 2.0 Authentication: secure sign-in with role assignment.
- Custom Blog System: text + media posts, tagging, and categorisation.
- Moderation Workflow: review, feedback, approval/rejection pipeline.
- Magazine Scheduling: automated timed releases with pagination and archiving.
- Real-Time Notifications: live alerts for comments, likes, and approvals.
- Scalable Cloud Deployment: Dockerised microservices distributed across AWS EC2 + Lambda.
- User-Friendly Interface: responsive, accessible, and built for simplicity.
Below are a few screenshots showcasing the application's user interface.
