Social Forum - Cloud Native Application

📖 Project Overview

Social Forum is a scalable, cloud-native social media platform designed to demonstrate modern cloud computing principles. Built with Spring Boot and deployed on AWS, it features a secure RESTful API, stateless authentication, and integration with cloud storage and AI services for content moderation.

The application follows a Monolithic Resource Architecture where the backend API and frontend static assets are packaged together but utilize managed cloud services (RDS, S3, CloudFront) for persistence and content delivery.

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🏗️ System Architecture

High-Level Design

The system is designed for High Availability (HA) and Fault Tolerance using AWS infrastructure.

• Compute: Spring Boot application running on EC2 instances (Auto Scaling Group).
• Database: Amazon RDS (MySQL) for relational data (Users, Posts, Comments).
• Storage: Amazon S3 for storing user-uploaded media (Images).
• Content Delivery: Amazon CloudFront (CDN) for low-latency delivery of static assets and images.
• Security:
  • JWT (JSON Web Tokens): Stateless authentication.
  • Cloudflare Turnstile: Bot protection for login/registration.
  • AWS SSM: Secrets management (no hardcoded passwords).

Tech Stack

Category	Technology
Backend	Java 17, Spring Boot 3.x, Spring Security, Spring Data JPA
Frontend	HTML5, CSS3, Vanilla JavaScript (Fetch API)
Database	MySQL 8.0 (AWS RDS)
Cloud	AWS (EC2, S3, CloudFront, RDS, VPC, IAM)
Build Tool	Maven

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🚀 Key Features

1. Secure Authentication

   • User Registration & Login with BCrypt password hashing.
   • JWT-based session management.
   • Bot verification using Cloudflare Turnstile.

2. Post Management

   • Create, Read, Update, and Delete (CRUD) posts.
   • Image uploads handled via AWS S3 with public access via CloudFront.

3. AI Content Moderation

   • Integrated Google Gemini Pro to analyze post content.
   • Automatically flags or hides posts containing hate speech or inappropriate content.

4. Admin Dashboard

   • View system health metrics.
   • Monitor user statistics and moderation logs.

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⚙️ Configuration & Environment Variables

Security Note: This application does not use hardcoded passwords. All sensitive credentials must be injected via Environment Variables or System Properties at runtime.

Required Environment Variables

To run this application locally or in production, set the following variables:

Variable Name	Description	Example
DB_USERNAME	Database Username	admin
DB_PASSWORD	Database Password	SecureP@ssw0rd!
JWT_SECRET	Secret key for signing tokens	YourLongRandomSecretKey...
S3_BUCKET_NAME	AWS S3 Bucket for media	social-forum-media
CLOUDFRONT_DOMAIN	CloudFront Distribution Domain	d12345.cloudfront.net
TURNSTILE_SITE_KEY	Cloudflare Site Key	0x4AAAA...
TURNSTILE_SECRET_KEY	Cloudflare Secret Key	0x4AAAA...

Profiles

The application supports Spring Profiles:

• local: For local development (uses application-local.yml).
• prod: For AWS deployment (uses application-prod.yml).

To activate a profile:

export SPRING_PROFILES_ACTIVE=prod

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🛠️ Installation & Setup

Prerequisites

• Java Development Kit (JDK) 17+
• Maven 3.8+
• MySQL Database (Local or Remote)

Build Steps

1. Clone the repository

   git clone https://github.com/your-username/social-forum.git
   cd social-forum

2. Build the JAR artifact

   mvn clean package -DskipTests

3. Run the Application

   java -jar target/social-forum-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar \
     --DB_USERNAME=root \
     --DB_PASSWORD=root \
     --JWT_SECRET=mysecretkey

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📂 Project Structure

src/main/
├── java/com/socialforum/
│   ├── config/       # Security & AWS Config
│   ├── controller/   # REST API Endpoints
│   ├── entity/       # Database Models
│   ├── repository/   # Data Access Layer
│   └── service/      # Business Logic
└── resources/
    ├── application.yml  # Main Config
    └── static/          # Frontend Assets
        ├── css/
        ├── js/          # API & Auth Logic
        └── index.html

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📝 License

This project is for educational purposes.