CodeCurate — Backend API

A REST API for discovering and reviewing YouTube coding tutorials. Developers can find videos, rate them, write reviews, reply to others, and collectively build a guide to the best coding content on YouTube.

✨ Key Features

Security & Authentication

• Dual-token architecture using short-lived Access Tokens and highly secure, httpOnly Refresh Tokens.
• Cryptographically secure email verification and password reset flows.
• Strict Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) separating user and admin privileges.

Resource Curation

• Direct integration with the YouTube Data API to extract and store video/playlist metadata.
• Support for custom descriptions and specific instructor names.
• Supports pagination, search filtering, and related-resource recommendations.

Community Interaction

• Reviews: Users can leave detailed reviews on specific resources.
• Social Engagement: Like reviews or reply to them.
• Tagging System: Reviews can be categorized using predefined tags (e.g., "Beginner Friendly", "Outdated").

Developer Experience

• Strict Validation: Every incoming payload and parameter is validated via Zod schemas before reaching the controllers.
• Repository Pattern: Clean separation of concerns with database logic abstracted into dedicated repository layers.
• Centralized Error Handling: Custom error classes and global middleware ensure standardized JSON error responses.
• Structured Logging: Winston-based logging with log files for persistent observability.

🚀 Tech Stack

• Runtime & Framework: Node.js (v18+), Express.js
• Language: TypeScript
• Database & ORM: PostgreSQL (Neon Serverless), Drizzle ORM
• Validation: Zod
• Authentication: JSON Web Tokens (JWT) & bcryptjs
• Security: Helmet, express-rate-limit
• Mailing: Nodemailer
• Logging: Winston
• API Docs: Swagger UI (swagger-ui-express)
• Others: Axios, CORS, cookie-parser

📁 Project Structure

src/
├── config/          # App configuration (env vars, constants)
├── db/              # Drizzle ORM setup and migrations
├── middlewares/     # Global middleware (auth, error handling, rate limiting)
├── modules/
│   ├── auth/        # Registration, login, token refresh, email verification
│   ├── resource/    # YouTube resource ingestion and management
│   ├── reviews/     # Reviews, replies, likes, tags
│   └── users/       # User profiles, history, account management
├── scripts/         # Seed scripts (admin, tags)
├── shared/          # Shared types and utilities
├── utils/           # Logger and helper functions
├── app.ts           # Express app setup
└── server.ts        # Server entry point

🛠️ Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Node.js v18 or higher
• A Neon serverless PostgreSQL database
• A YouTube Data API v3 key
• An SMTP email account (e.g. Gmail with an app password)

1. Clone the repo

git clone https://github.com/charukirti/codecurate-backend.git
cd codecurate-backend

2. Install dependencies

npm install

3. Set up environment variables

Create a .env file in the root directory and populate it with the following:

# Server
PORT=3000
NODE_ENV=development
BASE_URL=http://localhost:3000
CLIENT_URL=http://localhost:5173

# Database (Neon)
DATABASE_URL=your_neon_postgres_connection_string

# YouTube API
YT_API_KEY=your_youtube_data_api_v3_key
YOUTUBE_API_URL=https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3

# JWT
ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET=your_access_token_secret
REFRESH_TOKEN_SECRET=your_refresh_token_secret
ACCESS_TOKEN_EXPIRY=15m
REFRESH_TOKEN_EXPIRY=7d

# Admin seed credentials
ADMIN_EMAIL=admin@example.com
ADMIN_PASSWORD=your_admin_password

# SMTP (Nodemailer)
SMTP_USER=your_email@example.com
SMTP_PASS=your_smtp_app_password

4. Run database migrations

npm run db:generate
npm run db:migrate

5. Seed initial data

Seed the predefined review tags:

npm run seed:tags

Create the initial admin account (uses ADMIN_EMAIL and ADMIN_PASSWORD from your .env):

npm run seed:admin

6. Start the development server

npm run dev

The server will be available at http://localhost:3000 (or your configured PORT).

• Health check: GET /health
• API documentation: GET /docs

📦 Available Scripts

Script	Description
npm run dev	Start development server with hot reload
npm run build	Compile TypeScript to dist/
npm start	Run the compiled production build
npm run db:generate	Generate Drizzle migration files
npm run db:migrate	Apply migrations to the database
npm run seed:admin	Create the initial admin user
npm run seed:tags	Seed predefined review tags
npm run lint	Run ESLint
npm run lint:fix	Run ESLint with auto-fix
npm run format	Format source files with Prettier

🚢 Production

npm run build
npm start

Make sure NODE_ENV=production is set in your production environment.

📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.