Codebook — Coder's Social Media

A full-stack social media platform for developers to share, view, and search code snippets, now deployed on AWS with CI/CD.
Have you ever written a piece of code that showcases your coding skills? Codebook is built for developers to share their projects and interact with the coding community.

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Features

• Secure authentication: Login / Signup using JWT
• Posts & Code Snippets: Create, edit, delete, and view posts with multiple code snippets
• Search: Search posts by title, description, or tags
• Responsive & PWA: Mobile-ready with progressive web app support

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Technology Stack

Frontend: React.js, Redux, Axios, Material-UI, react-router-dom, moment.js
Backend: Node.js, Express.js, MongoDB, JWT, bcrypt
Database: MongoDB Atlas
Containerization & Cloud: Docker, AWS ECS Fargate, ECR, ALB, CloudFront, SSM Parameter Store
CI/CD: GitHub Actions (build & deploy on push to main)

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Deployment

Note: The backend has been moved from AWS ECS Fargate to Render's free tier to reduce hosting costs while keeping the project accessible. All frontend/backend functionality remains the same.

• Frontend: Hosted on S3 static website, distributed via CloudFront
• Backend: Dockerized, stored in ECR, deployed on ECS Fargate behind ALB, and served via CloudFront
• CI/CD Pipeline: On every push to main, GitHub Actions:
  1. Build Docker image
  2. Push to ECR
  3. Update ECS service
  4. Invalidate CloudFront cache
  5. Secrets Management: Securely inject MONGO_URI and JWT_SECRET using AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store

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Architecture Design

Frontend & Backend Distribution: CloudFront + S3 + ALB

• Frontend is hosted on S3 static website.
• Backend runs on ECS Fargate, containerized via Docker, stored in ECR, and exposed through an Application Load Balancer (ALB).
• Both frontend and backend are served through the same CloudFront distribution with different origin behaviors:
  • /api/* → routes to ALB / ECS backend
  • / and static assets → routes to S3 frontend
• Purpose:
  • Global caching and fast content delivery
  • Reduce latency for users worldwide
  • Consolidate traffic under a single CDN domain

ECS Fargate + ALB

• ECS Fargate provides serverless container orchestration — no EC2 instances needed.
• Task Definition defines backend container configuration (image, ports, environment variables).
• ALB (Application Load Balancer):
  • Handles incoming traffic from CloudFront
  • Routes requests to healthy ECS tasks based on path patterns (/api/*)
  • Provides fault-tolerant load distribution
• Security: ECS tasks run in a VPC with security groups, allowing only the ALB to access backend ports.

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Secrets Management

• Environment variables like MONGO_URI and JWT_SECRET are securely stored in AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store.
• Other secrets like AWS credintials and other environment related keys are stored in GitHub Secrets
• GitHub Actions CI/CD pipeline injects these secrets into ECS tasks at runtime.
• Benefit: No hardcoded credentials; secure, auditable, and production-ready.

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Monitoring & Logging

• CloudWatch Logs capture ECS task logs to monitor backend performance, errors, and API activity.

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Key Takeaways

• Full-stack, cloud-native deployment with AWS ECS Fargate, ALB, CloudFront, and S3
• Automated CI/CD with GitHub Actions
• Secure secrets management via SSM Parameter Store
• Global content delivery and low-latency access using a single CloudFront distribution