Blog Starter Project

My Contributions

This project was completed as a team. I worked primarily on the blog functionality, including updating, deleting, liking/disliking posts,tracking popularity scores...

This repository contains a comprehensive, backend for a modern blogging platform, built with Go. It follows a clean architecture pattern and includes features like user authentication, blog and comment management, AI-powered content assistance, and efficient data handling with caching and background workers.

Architecture

The project is structured using a clean architecture approach to ensure separation of concerns, maintainability, and testability.

• Domain: Contains the core business logic, entities (structs), and interfaces that define the contracts for repositories and use cases. This layer is independent of any framework or external technology.
• Usecases: Implements the application-specific business rules by orchestrating the flow of data between the Domain and Repository layers.
• Repository: The data access layer. This implementation uses MongoDB to persist data and an in-memory LRU cache to optimize read operations.
• Delivery: The presentation layer, responsible for handling HTTP requests and responses. It uses the Gin web framework to define API routes and controllers.
• Infrastructure: Holds all the external concerns like database connections, JWT services, OAuth configurations, password hashing, email services, and background workers.

Key Features

• User Management & Authentication:

  • Secure user registration with email verification.
  • Local login using JWT (Access & Refresh Tokens).
  • Google OAuth2 for social login.
  • Forgot/Reset password functionality.
  • User profile creation and updates.
  • Role-based access control (User vs. Admin).

• Blog & Comment System:

  • Full CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) for blog posts and comments.
  • Like/Dislike system for blog posts.
  • Popularity score calculation based on views, likes, and comments.
  • Efficient pagination and sorting for blogs (latest, oldest, popular) and comments.
  • Advanced blog filtering by tags and date ranges.
  • Full-text search functionality for blog content.

• AI-Powered Content Assistance:

  • Integrates with Google's Gemini AI to provide content editing and SEO suggestions for blog writers.

• Performance & Scalability:

  • In-memory LRU caching for frequently accessed blogs and comments to reduce database load.
  • Asynchronous background worker to refresh blog popularity scores without blocking API requests.
  • Optimized database queries with indexing.

• Configuration:

  • Flexible configuration management using Viper, supporting both config.yaml and environment variables.

Getting Started

Follow these instructions to set up and run the project locally.

Prerequisites

• Go (version 1.24 or later)
• MongoDB instance (local or Atlas)
• A Google Cloud project for OAuth2 credentials.
• A Google Gemini API Key.
• An application-specific password for your email account (for sending verification emails).

Installation & Setup

1. Clone the Repository

   git clone https://github.com/gedyzed/blog-starter-project.git
   cd blog-starter-project

2. Configure Environment Variables Create a .env file in the root directory. You can copy the structure from Infrastructure/config/env.example, but note that the example file is empty. Your .env file should look like this:

   # Application
   PORT=8080
   APP_URL="http://localhost:8080"
   
   # Database
   MONGO_URL="<your_mongodb_connection_string>"
   
   # Authentication (generate strong random strings)
   AUTH_ACCESS_TOKEN_KEY="<your_super_secret_access_key>"
   AUTH_REFRESH_TOKEN_KEY="<your_super_secret_refresh_key>"
   
   # Google OAuth2
   OAUTH_CLIENT_ID="<your_google_client_id>"
   OAUTH_CLIENT_SECRET="<your_google_client_secret>"
   OAUTH_REDIRECT_URL="http://localhost:8080/oauth/callback"
   
   # Email Service (for user verification & password reset)
   EMAIL_SENDER_EMAIL="<your_email@example.com>"
   EMAIL_APP_PASSWORD="<your_email_app_password>"
   EMAIL_SMTP_HOST="smtp.gmail.com"
   EMAIL_SMTP_PORT="587"
   
   # Generative AI
   GEMINI_API_KEY="<your_google_gemini_api_key>"

3. Install Dependencies

   go mod tidy

4. Run the Application

   go run ./Delivery/main.go

   The server will start on the port specified in your .env file (default: 8080).

API Endpoints

User & Authentication Routes

Method	Endpoint	Description	Access
POST	/users/register	Register a new user with email verification.	Public
POST	/users/login	Log in a user with username and password.	Public
POST	/users/forgot-password	Send a password reset link to the user's email.	Public
POST	/users/reset-password	Reset password using a token from email.	Public
POST	/users/token/refresh_token	Get a new access token using a refresh token.	Public
DELETE	/users/logout/:username	Invalidate the user's session tokens.	Public
POST	/users/update-profile	Update the logged-in user's profile information.	Protected
POST	/tokens/send-vcode	Send a verification code to an email.	Public

Google OAuth Routes

Method	Endpoint	Description	Access
GET	/oauth/auth/login	Redirects to Google's authentication page.	Public
GET	/oauth/callback	Callback URL for Google to redirect to after auth.	Public
POST	/oauth/refresh-token	Refresh an OAuth access token.	Public

Blog Routes

Method	Endpoint	Description	Access
GET	/blogs	Get all blogs with pagination and sorting.	Public
GET	/blogs/search	Search blogs by a query keyword.	Public
GET	/blogs/filter	Filter blogs by tags and/or date range.	Public
GET	/blogs/:id	Get a single blog by its ID.	Public
POST	/blogs	Create a new blog post.	Protected
PUT	/blogs/:id	Update a blog post.	Protected (Author)
DELETE	/blogs/:id	Delete a blog post.	Protected (Author/Admin)
POST	/blogs/:id/like	Like or unlike a blog post.	Protected
POST	/blogs/:id/dislike	Dislike or remove dislike from a blog post.	Protected

Comment Routes

Method	Endpoint	Description	Access
GET	/comments/:blogId	Get all comments for a blog post.	Public
GET	/comments/:blogId/:id	Get a single comment by its ID.	Public
POST	/comments/:blogId	Create a new comment.	Protected
PUT	/comments/:blogId/:id	Update a comment.	Protected (Author)
DELETE	/comments/:blogId/:id	Delete a comment.	Protected (Author/Admin)

AI Routes

Method	Endpoint	Description	Access
GET	/ai/generate	Get content suggestions from the AI.	Protected

Admin Routes

Method	Endpoint	Description	Access
POST	/admins/promote-demote	Promote a user to admin or demote an admin to user.	Admin