Journal Application

Problem

Needed a personal journaling system with secure authentication, clean API design, and containerized deployment — while practicing microservices architecture patterns.

Solution

Built a full-stack journal application with:

• JWT-based authentication and authorization
• RESTful API design with proper HTTP semantics
• MongoDB for flexible document storage
• Docker containerization for deployment readiness
• CI/CD pipeline for automated testing

Architecture

Client → API Gateway → Auth Service → Journal Service → MongoDB
                                    → User Service → MongoDB

Key Features

• Secure JWT token management with refresh tokens
• Role-based access control
• RESTful CRUD operations for journal entries
• Tag-based organization and search
• Containerized with Docker Compose
• CI/CD pipeline with automated testing

Stack

• Java 17 — Core application language
• Spring Boot 3 — Application framework
• Spring Security — Authentication and authorization
• MongoDB — Document database
• Docker — Containerization
• GitHub Actions — CI/CD

Learnings

This project reinforced the importance of clean API design and proper security practices. JWT implementation taught me about token lifecycle management, and Docker containerization simplified the deployment story significantly.