Twitter Clone API 🐦

A high-performance, containerized REST API built to power a modern social media platform. This serves as the backend service for the Twitter Clone UI, handling user authentication bridging, tweet management, and personalized feed generation.

🛠 Tech Stack

• Framework: Python/FastAPI
• Database: PostgreSQL (Hosted on Neon serverless)
• Authentication: Firebase Auth (JWT Bearer Token verification)
• Deployment: Google Cloud Run (Fully managed serverless container)
• CI/CD: GitHub Actions

🚀 Local Development Setup

To run this backend locally, you will need Python 3.9+ and a Neon Postgres connection string.

1. Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/Isaac3924/twitter_clone.git
cd twitter_clone

2. Set up the virtual environment

python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate # On Windows use `venv\Scripts\activate`

3. Install Dependencies

pip install -r requirements.txt

4. Environment Variables

Create a .env file in the root directory and add your Neon database connection string:

DATABASE_URL="postgresql://[user]:[password]@[neon_hostname]/[dbname]?sslmode=require"

(Note: If testing Firebase Auth Locally, you will also need to generate a firebase-credentials.json service account key from your Firebase Console and place it in the root directory).

5. Run the server

uvicorn main:app --reload

The API will be available at http://127.0.0.1:8000. You can view the interactive Swagger documentation by navigating to http://127.0.0.1:8000/docs.

🐳 Docker Setup (Coming Soon)

A Dockerfile is being implemented to standardize local development and testing environments alongside the production Cloud Run containers.

✨ Key Technical Achievements

• Relational Data Modeling: Implemented a many-to-many Follows table to generate personalized, chronological user feeds.
• Optimized Queries: Utilized SQL subqueries and PostgreSQL RETURNING clauses to bundle user profile data and follower statistics into highly efficient, single-trip API responses.

🗺️ Future Roadmap

• V1.1 - Interaction Layer: Implement POST and DELETE endpoints to support scalable Tweet Liking and Retweeting functionality.
• V2.0 - Media Support: Integrate Google Cloud Storage buckets to hqandle secure, multipart form data uploads for images, GIFs, and videos.
• V3.0 - AI Integration: Leverage the Gemini/Vertex AI API to automatically generate accessible alt-text for uploaded media and provide intelligent feed summaries.