LinkHub: A Full-Stack MERN Application with an End-to-End Serverless CI/CD Pipeline on AWS

This repository contains the source code for LinkHub, a modern, full-stack link management application, and the complete infrastructure code to deploy it on AWS using a fully automated, serverless CI/CD pipeline.

The primary goal of this project was to build a real-world application while implementing modern DevOps best practices, including Infrastructure as Code (IaC), containerization, and end-to-end automation.

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🚀 Key Features

• Elegant UI: A professional, responsive user interface built with Next.js and Tailwind CSS.
• Full-Stack Functionality: Complete CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) operations for managing links.
• User Authentication: Secure user registration and login system using JWT.
• Advanced Features: Search, filtering by project, and a polished user experience.
• Fully Automated Deployment: Every git push to the main branch automatically builds, tests, and deploys the application to the AWS cloud.

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🏛️ Solution Architecture

This project utilizes a modern, cloud-native architecture that separates the application from the infrastructure, ensuring scalability, security, and maintainability.

The workflow is as follows:

1. Code Push: A developer pushes code changes to the GitHub repository.
2. CI/CD Pipeline Trigger: A GitHub Actions workflow is automatically triggered.
3. Build & Push Docker Images: The workflow builds Docker images for both the frontend (client) and backend (server) applications.
4. Store Images in ECR: The newly built images are pushed to Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR), a private and secure Docker registry.
5. Deploy to ECS: The workflow then sends a command to Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) to pull the new images from ECR and deploy them as new tasks, using the AWS Fargate serverless compute engine.
6. Infrastructure as Code (IaC): The entire AWS environment—including the VPC, Subnets, Security Groups, ECR repositories, ECS Cluster, Task Definition, and Application Load Balancer—is defined and managed as code using Terraform.

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✨ Cloud Watch in Aws

🛠️ Tech Stack & Tools

Application Stack

• Frontend: Next.js, React, Tailwind CSS
• Backend: Node.js, Express.js
• Database: MongoDB Atlas (Cloud Database)
• Authentication: JSON Web Tokens (JWT)

DevOps & Cloud

• Containerization: Docker, Docker Compose (for local development)
• Cloud Provider: Amazon Web Services (AWS)
• Infrastructure as Code: Terraform
• CI/CD: GitHub Actions
• Container Orchestration: AWS ECS with Fargate
• Container Registry: AWS ECR
• Networking & Security: AWS VPC, Security Groups, Application Load Balancer (ALB)

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✨ CI/CD Pipeline in Action

The automated pipeline handles every step, from building the containers to deploying them in a highly available and scalable environment, ensuring rapid and reliable delivery of new features.

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🌐 Live Demo

The application is deployed on AWS and is publicly accessible.

[Link to Live Application]

Note: This is a personal portfolio project. The cloud infrastructure may be spun down periodically to manage costs. If the demo is unavailable, please feel free to run the project locally using docker-compose.