🚀 DevBond - Social Networking Platform

DevBond is a full-stack social networking platform built with the MERN stack, Tailwind CSS, and DaisyUI, featuring:

• 💬 Real-time communication using WebSockets
• 💸 Seamless payment integration with Razorpay
• ☁️ Cloud deployment on AWS EC2 for scalability
• 🔐 Robust authentication and validation
• 📡 Dynamic user feed, connection requests, and profile management

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🧩 Tech Stack

• Frontend: React, Tailwind CSS, DaisyUI
• Backend: Node.js, Express.js, MongoDB (Mongoose)
• Authentication: JWT, bcrypt, cookie-parser
• Real-time: Socket.IO
• Payments: Razorpay
• Deployment: AWS EC2

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📁 API Endpoints

Auth Routes

Method	Endpoint	Description
POST	/signup	Register a new user
POST	/login	Login existing user
POST	/logout	Logout current user

Profile Routes

Method	Endpoint	Description
GET	/profile/view	View profile
PATCH	/profile/edit	Edit profile
PATCH	/profile/password	Forgot password handler

Connection Request Routes

Method	Endpoint	Description
POST	/request/send/:status/:userId	Send request (interested/ignored)
POST	/request/review/:status/:requestId	Accept or reject a connection

User Routes

Method	Endpoint	Description
GET	/user/connections	Get all accepted connections
GET	/user/requests/received	Get all received requests
GET	/user/feed	View feed of other users

🔹 Status types: interested, ignored, accepted, rejected

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⚙️ Setup & Installation

# 1. Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/pavansingh888/DevBond.git
cd devbond

# 2. Initialize Git
git init

# 3. Install dependencies
npm install express mongoose bcrypt cookie-parser jsonwebtoken validator razorpay dotenv socket.io cron-scheduler cors

# 4. Install dev dependencies
npm install --save-dev nodemon

# 5. Set environment variables in a `.env` file

Sample .env file

PORT=
JWT_SECRET=
DB_CONNECTION_STRING=
AWS_ACCESS_KEY=
AWS_SECRET_KEY=
RAZORPAY_KEY_ID=
RAZORPAY_KEY_SECRET=
RAZORPAY_WEBHOOK_SECRET=

Run the server

npm run dev   # uses nodemon

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📬 API Testing

• Use Postman to test all routes
• Create workspace, save collections, and add auth headers if required

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🧠 Development Journey Highlights

🗃️ MongoDB Integration

• Connected MongoDB Atlas using mongoose
• Created UserSchema and RequestSchema
• Used validations: required, unique, minLength, validate, timestamps
• Applied $or, $and, $nin, $ne queries
• Pagination using .skip() and .limit()

🔒 Auth and Security

• Encrypted passwords using bcrypt
• Generated and verified JWTs with jsonwebtoken
• Used cookies for maintaining user sessions
• Created getJWT() and comparePassword() schema methods

💌 Connection System

• Sent, reviewed (accept/reject), and viewed connection requests
• Designed schema and API validation
• Implemented logic to ensure data consistency and prevent duplicates

💸 Razorpay Integration

• Integrated payment system using Razorpay SDK
• Setup webhook for payment status
• Managed environment secrets securely

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📦 Deployment

• Deployed on AWS EC2
• Used PM2 for background process management
• Setup nginx reverse proxy and SSL if needed

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🧪 Tips & Lessons

• Always validate incoming data - NEVER TRUST req.body
• Structure routers in folders and group them logically
• Understand middleware flow and express internals
• Index DB fields that are frequently queried
• Use schema .pre() for pre-save logic
• Always consider corner cases before finalizing API logic

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📄 License

This project is open source and available under the MIT License.