KeebSocial is project made as a tool to learn about full stack web development.
The source code is available on my GitHub.Docker is a piece of software which manages containers. Containers are, according to IBM (external link), executable units of software that package application code along with its libraries and dependencies. They allow code to run in any computing environment, whether it be desktop, traditional IT or cloud infrastructure. By containerizing applications, they can be made more portable, reliable, and secure. To spin up the entire project, just one command needs to be run. In addition, the container environment isolates each piece of software, so they can only communicate over known protocols. This way, if there is a breach in the web server, which is the only part of the package that is exposed to the internet, a hacker can't do anything else except mess with the networking setup. The only thing the hacker can do is ask PHP to serve a dynamic webpage. If NGINX and PHP or NGINX and the database were running in the same container, a breach to one would be a breach to all.
The project is made up of three separate docker containers:
NGINX is a free and open source web server software which has been gaining increasing market share over Apache, the industry standard, in recent years. NGINX is responsible for handling any web requests you send, manages SSL certificates, and forwards requests to other containers when need be.
The PHP container runs dynamic webpages in a separate container than they are served, which helps to increase the security of the entire stack. PHP serves as an interface between the HTML and the backend database. I have a series of API functions which can serve every single aspect of the platform. For example, there is a file to log in and get a session token, a file to get profile fields, and a file to get the content of a post, among many others.
Everything on that platform is ultimately stored in a database called MongoDB. MongoDB is a non-relational database, meaning that it exists outside the paradigm of tables and columns. I've structured every object on the platform to follow a few simple formats, which have been carefully thought out to minimize the amount of reads that have to be conducted. While I am sacrificing to an extent storage size to fit my format, it enables the platform to be far more scalable than a traditional relational database system. For example, likes are stored twice: once as a list of all users who liked the post, and once as a list of all posts liked by a user. This represents two distinct actions that may be done, optimizing the read time for both of them. On social media platforms, reads are going to far outnumber writes, so I think this optimization saves a significant number of computing power.
I've written a bit of a standard for myself to help implement the API, which is below.
keebsocial/api/v1/AUTHORIZE.php
user=username
key=authentication token
returns 0|1
keebsocial/api/v1/ACT.php
key=authentication token
type=POST|REPLY|REKEEB|LIKE
content=UUID of the item to act on
returns 0|1
keebsocial/api/v1/FOLLOW.php
key=authentication token
target=username to act on
return 0|1|2, SUCCESS|FAILURE|REQUEST
keebsocial/api/v1/ACCEPT.php?user=user&key=key&target=target
key=authentication token
target=username to accept follow from
returns 0|1
keebsocial/api/v1/GETKEEB.php
key=authentication token
content=uuid of keeb
returns 0|1, text
keebsocial/api/v1/GETPROFILE.php
key=authentication token
target=username
returns 0|1, username, bio, follows, followers
keebsocial/api/v1/SETPROFILE.php
key=authentication token
target=bio|
content=what to set as
keebsocial/api/v1/GETPROFILEKEEBS.php
key=authentication token
target=username
start=index of start
end=index of end
count=total number (if set, ignores start/end, reads from most recent)
returns 0|1, uuids of all keebs by a user within bounds
keebsocial/api/v1/GETIMAGE.php
key=authentication token
content=image uuid
returns 0|1, image if they have approval to view the parent keeb (the keeb in which the image is embedded)
keebsocial/api/v1/GETTIMELINE.php
key=authentication token
count=keeb count
returns 0|1, most recent POST, REPLY, REKEEB keebs from those whom the calling user follows
keebsocial/api/v1/LOGIN.php
user=username
password=password
returns 0|1, auth key
keebsocial/api/v1/LOGOUT.php
user=username
key=authentication token
returns 0|1
keebsocial/api/v1/REGISTER.php
user=username
password=password
returns 0|1
keebsocial/api/v1/PASSWD.php
user=username
old=old password
new=new password
returns 0|1
keebsocial/api/v2/GETNOTIFICATIONS.php
key=authentication token
returns 0|1, notifications
In addition, I've written out in plaintext a format for implementing the database:
Password Database
users
username
email
hash
tokens
token
expiration
Content Databse
users
username
name
UUID
date
bio
keebs
[UUID...]
followers
[UUID...]
follows
[UUID...]
likes
[UUID...]
keebs_count
followers_count
follows_count
likes_count
keebs
UUID
date
content
likes
[UUID...]
rekeebs
[UUID...]
likes_counts
rekeebs_count
media
Media UUID
Association UUID
date