HUFEED — Campus Social Hub

Overview

HUFEED is a campus news and events platform connecting students with clubs, events, and announcements at Haramaya University. The backend handles authentication with JWT cookie rotation, role-based access control, MongoDB models for users/posts/events/comments, Socket.io real-time events, and Cloudinary image management. The web frontend is a React 19 SPA with a three-column layout (navigation, feed, profile panel), sticky search, and dark mode. The mobile app is built with React Native/Expo featuring 20+ screens, drawer navigation, and native image picking.

The problem

Building a consistent cross-platform experience with secure auth, real-time updates, and role-based access while keeping the codebase maintainable across three separate repositories.

The solution

Express 5 backend with TypeScript strict mode, Zod validation, and dual API mount paths. Shared JWT auth strategy across all clients. Socket.io piggybacking on the HTTP server for real-time push after DB writes. Three CI/CD GitHub Actions workflows — one per repo.

Process

1. Designed MongoDB schemas for 7 entities, built Express 5 REST API (~65 endpoints) with JWT cookie rotation and Zod validation, wired Socket.io real-time events.

2. Built React 19 web SPA with three-column responsive layout, sticky search, post feed, events, clubs, admin dashboard, and dark mode.

3. Developed React Native (Expo) mobile app with 20+ screens, drawer + tab navigation, image picker, and platform-aware API config.

4. Set up GitHub Actions CI/CD for all three repos, Docker multi-stage backend build, and docker-compose for local deployment.

5. Wrote Jest + supertest tests with mongodb-memory-server, auto-generated OpenAPI 3.0 docs from Zod schemas.

What I learned

Dual API mount paths enable gradual version migration. Promise.allSettled for parallel uploads prevents one failure from aborting a batch. Email failures during registration should be non-fatal. Mongoose connection pooling needs special handling for test isolation with mongodb-memory-server.

Features

• JWT auth with httpOnly cookie rotation (access 15m + refresh 7d)
• Three-role RBAC: student, org_admin, admin
• Post feed with image carousels, likes, saves, comments
• Event listings with RSVP management
• Club directory and management
• Real-time notifications via Socket.io
• Admin dashboard with analytics
• Email verification and password reset
• Cloudinary image uploads
• Dark mode across all platforms
• Swagger/OpenAPI docs auto-generated from Zod schemas
• Responsive web layout (desktop three-column, mobile bottom-nav)
• Docker deployment with docker-compose

Results

• Fully functional backend serving all three clients from a single API
• Responsive React 19 web app with desktop and mobile layouts
• Cross-platform React Native mobile app (Android + iOS)
• CI/CD pipelines with automated linting, building, and testing
• Docker containerization with one-command local deployment
• Auto-generated API documentation served via Swagger UI

My contribution

• - Designed and built the entire REST API with Express 5 + TypeScript
• - Implemented JWT auth with cookie rotation and RBAC
• - Designed MongoDB schemas for 7 entity types
• - Built Socket.io real-time event system
• - Contributed to both web and mobile frontend development
• - Set up CI/CD, Docker, and automated testing