Novus — Modern Storytelling Platform

Novus is a production-ready content platform for modern storytelling. Built with the MERN stack and enhanced with AI-powered content analysis, it prioritizes security, performance, and a seamless developer experience.

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System Architecture

Novus follows a decoupled Client-Server architecture with centralized state management, cloud integration, and AI-enhanced data enrichment.

graph TD
    User([User / Browser])
    subgraph "Frontend (React + Vite)"
        UI[Tailwind UI]
        State[React Hooks / Context]
        RQ[React Query]
    end
    subgraph "Backend (Express + Node)"
        Router[API Router]
        Auth[JWT Middleware]
        Controllers[Business Logic]
        Error[Global Error Handler]
    end
    Gemini[Gemini AI API]
    Cloudinary[Cloudinary CDN]
    Mail[SMTP / Nodemailer]
    DB[(MongoDB Atlas)]

    User <--> UI
    UI <--> State
    State <--> RQ
    RQ <--> Router
    Router <--> Auth
    Auth <--> Controllers
    Controllers <--> DB
    Controllers <--> Cloudinary
    Controllers --> Gemini
    Controllers --> Mail
    Error -.-> User

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Key Features

AI-Powered Content Analysis

On every article submission, the backend calls the Google Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite model to automatically:

• Generate a compelling 2-sentence TL;DR summary of the article.
• Extract 3–5 SEO-friendly aiTags — stored directly on the article document for filtering and discoverability.

This is handled entirely server-side in services/aiService.js, so the author gets intelligent enrichment with zero extra effort.

Stateless Security

• JWT & Bcrypt: Stateless authentication and password hashing. Tokens are signed server-side; no session state is stored.
• Helmet: Sets secure HTTP headers out of the box (XSS protection, HSTS, etc.).
• Express Rate Limit: Caps each IP at 100 requests per 15-minute window — preventing brute-force and DDoS attempts.

Cloud-Native Media

• Cloudinary Integration: Images are uploaded directly to Cloudinary. The backend validates the upload server-side and only stores the optimized CDN URL in MongoDB — keeping the database lean.

Email Newsletter System

• Nodemailer (SMTP): When a user subscribes to the newsletter, a styled HTML welcome email is dispatched via services/mailService.js.
• The subscriber's email is stored in a dedicated Subscriber collection, decoupled from the User model.

Performance & DX

• Compression: Gzip/Brotli response compression via the compression middleware.
• MongoDB Aggregation Pipelines: Used for article feeds with server-side join ($lookup), projection (password scrubbing), shuffling ($sample), and pagination — avoiding N+1 queries.
• Code Splitting: React.lazy and Suspense reduce the initial JS bundle size for faster first-load times.
• Centralized Error Handling: A single global middleware captures all async errors, preventing server crashes and returning clean, consistent JSON error responses with stack traces hidden in production.

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Tech Stack

Layer	Technology
Frontend	React 19, Vite, Tailwind CSS 4, React Query, React Router v7, Lucide React
Backend	Node.js, Express.js v5, Mongoose, JWT, Nodemailer
AI	Google Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite (@google/genai)
Media	Cloudinary
Security	Helmet, Express Rate Limit, Bcrypt, CORS Hardening
Optimization	Compression (Gzip/Brotli), Code Splitting, MongoDB Aggregation
Database	MongoDB Atlas

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Authentication Flow

sequenceDiagram
    participant User
    participant Frontend
    participant Backend
    participant DB

    User->>Frontend: Enter Credentials
    Frontend->>Backend: POST /api/auth/login
    Backend->>DB: Find & Verify User
    DB-->>Backend: User Document
    Backend->>Backend: Compare bcrypt hash
    Backend->>Backend: Sign JWT (Secret key)
    Backend-->>Frontend: HTTP 200 + JWT Token
    Frontend->>Frontend: Store Token (localStorage)
    Note over User,DB: Subsequent Requests
    Frontend->>Backend: Authorization: Bearer <token>
    Backend->>Backend: Verify JWT Signature
    Backend-->>Frontend: Protected Resource

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Data Model (ERD)

erDiagram
    USER ||--o{ ARTICLE : authors
    USER {
        ObjectId _id
        string username
        string email
        string password
        string bio
        string profileImage
    }
    ARTICLE {
        ObjectId _id
        string title
        string content
        string category
        string thumbnail
        ObjectId author
        string summary
        string[] aiTags
        string[] tags
        number upvotes
        string[] upvotedBy
        date createdAt
    }
    SUBSCRIBER {
        ObjectId _id
        string email
    }

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Note: The ARTICLE schema reflects the full model including AI-enriched fields (summary, aiTags) added automatically on creation.

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API Endpoints

Method	Endpoint	Auth	Description
POST	/api/auth/register	N	Register a new user
POST	/api/auth/login	N	Login and receive JWT
GET	/api/articles	N	Fetch article feed (supports search, category, shuffle, limit, skip)
GET	/api/articles/:id	N	Get single article
POST	/api/articles	Y	Create article (triggers AI analysis)
PUT	/api/articles/:id	Y	Update own article
DELETE	/api/articles/:id	Y	Delete own article
POST	/api/articles/:id/upvote	Y	Upvote an article
POST	/api/articles/:id/downvote	Y	Remove upvote
GET	/api/users/:id	Y	Get user profile
POST	/api/subscribe	N	Subscribe to newsletter (sends welcome email)
GET	/api/health	N	Server health check

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Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Node.js >= 18.x
• MongoDB (Running locally or via Atlas)
• A Cloudinary account
• A Google AI Studio API key (for Gemini)
• A Gmail account with App Password enabled (for SMTP)

Setup

1. Clone the Repo

   git clone https://github.com/RanaVinit/novus.git
   cd novus

2. Backend Configuration

   cd backend
   npm install

   Create a .env file with the following keys:

   PORT=5000
   MONGO_URI=your_mongodb_connection_string
   JWT_SECRET=your_super_secret_key
   CLOUDINARY_CLOUD_NAME=your_cloudinary_name
   CLOUDINARY_API_KEY=your_cloudinary_key
   CLOUDINARY_API_SECRET=your_cloudinary_secret
   GEMINI_API_KEY=your_google_ai_api_key
   SMTP_USER=your_gmail_address
   SMTP_PASS=your_gmail_app_password

   npm run dev

3. Frontend Configuration

   cd ../frontend
   npm install

   Create a .env file:

   VITE_API_URL=http://localhost:5000

   npm run dev

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Roadmap & Future Enhancements

• Unit & Integration Testing: Implementing Jest and Supertest for controller and route testing.
• Caching Layer: Integrating Redis for high-traffic article feed caching.
• Social Features: Commenting system and real-time notifications via WebSockets.
• CI/CD: GitHub Actions for automated linting, testing, and deployment.

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License

ISC License. Feel free to use this project for learning or as a foundation for your own platform.