📝 Blog Platform – Backend

This is the backend service for a multi-user blogging platform, developed using Java 21, Spring Boot, and PostgreSQL. It provides secure REST APIs for managing users, blog posts, comments, tags, and categories. Authentication is handled using JWT, and the application is fully containerized using Docker and Docker Compose.

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🚀 Features

• 🔐 JWT-based Authentication – Secure login system for registered users
• ✍️ Post Management – Create, edit, delete, and retrieve blog posts
• 🏷️ Tags & Categories – Filter and classify posts easily
• 💬 Comments – Users can comment on any blog post
• ❤️ Like System – Like functionality implemented directly on post entity
• 📄 Draft & Published Posts – Managed using Enum for post status
• 📌 Filter Posts – By category and tags
• 🧾 Exception Handling – Centralized via @ControllerAdvice
• 📤 DTOs & Mappers – Clean data exchange using MapStruct
• ✅ Validation – Bean validation on incoming request DTOs
• 🐳 Docker + Docker Compose – For local development with PostgreSQL

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🛠️ Tech Stack

• Java 21
• Spring Boot
• Spring Data JPA
• Spring Security + JWT
• PostgreSQL
• MapStruct
• Bean Validation
• Docker & Docker Compose
• Maven

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🧱 Entity Relationships

• A User can write many Posts
• A Post can have many Tags and one Category
• A Post can have many Comments
• Any User can comment or like any post
• Likes are stored as a counter in the post entity (not a separate table)

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🔐 Security

• JWT Authentication with login/register endpoints
• All endpoints require authentication
• Currently supports only USER role (Admin role coming soon)

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🔍 Everything You Need to Know — Right Here

View Documentation

📦 API Examples

Method	Endpoint	Description
POST	/api/auth/register	Register a new user
POST	/api/auth/login	Login and receive JWT
GET	/api/posts	Get all published posts
POST	/api/posts	Create a new post
GET	/api/posts/filter	Filter by tag or category
POST	/api/posts/{id}/like	Like a post
POST	/api/posts/{id}/comment	Add a comment

📌 All endpoints require JWT token in the Authorization header.

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🛠️ Setup Instructions

✅ Prerequisites

• Java 21+
• Maven
• Docker & Docker Compose

🔧 Configuration

Set the following in application.yml:

spring:
  datasource:
    url: jdbc:postgresql://localhost:5432/blogdb
    username: your_db_user
    password: your_db_password
  jpa:
    hibernate:
      ddl-auto: update

jwt: secret: your_jwt_secret

🐳 Run with Docker Compose

docker-compose up --build

App will run on http://localhost:8080

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📌 To-Do / Future Plans

• 🔄 Frontend integration (React) - Currently on it
• 📧 Email verification
• 👤 Profile picture upload
• 🛠️ Admin panel for moderation
• 📑 Pagination and advanced search
• 📄 Swagger/OpenAPI documentation

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🤝 Contributing

Pull requests are welcome. If you find bugs or want to suggest features, feel free to open an issue or create a PR.

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👨‍💻 Author

Lakshay — @lakshaybxt