NodeTalk

The social network for developers who read documentation.

What it is

• Server-rendered social app (EJS) with API-style responses where needed.
• Users can post, like, comment, follow, and chat in real time.
• Authentication via email/password, guest, and GitHub OAuth.

Features

• Auth: local login/signup, guest login, GitHub OAuth, sessions in Postgres.
• Feed: create posts, view feed, like/unlike, comment.
• Social: follow requests, private profiles, accept/reject requests.
• Chat: 1:1 conversations + real-time messages via Socket.IO.
• Profile: edit profile, upload avatar to Supabase storage.
• Validation: Zod schemas for params/body/query.

Tech stack

• Node + Express 5 + TypeScript (CommonJS runtime)
• Prisma (Postgres) + connect-pg-simple (sessions)
• Passport (local + GitHub)
• Socket.IO
• EJS views + CSS
• Supabase storage (avatars)
• Vitest + Supertest

Project structure

.
├── prisma/
│   ├── schema.prisma         # DB schema
│   └── seeds.ts              # Seed script (users, posts, follows, chat)
├── scripts/
│   └── test-db-migrate.js     # Test DB migrate + session table
├── public/
│   └── css/style.css          # App styles
├── src/
│   ├── app.ts                 # Express app + Socket.IO bootstrap
│   ├── config/                # Prisma, sessions, passport, multer, supabase
│   ├── controllers/           # Route handlers (auth, posts, users, chat)
│   ├── middleware/            # Auth, validation, error handling
│   ├── routes/                # Route definitions
│   ├── types/                 # Express type extensions
│   ├── utils/                 # asyncHandler
│   ├── validators/            # Zod schemas
│   └── views/                 # EJS pages + partials + layouts
├── tests/                     # Vitest + Supertest specs
├── generated/                 # Prisma client output (gitignored)
├── tsconfig.json
├── nodemon.json
└── package.json

Key routes (HTML + JSON)

• GET / → home (redirects to /posts when logged in)
• GET /health → health check
• Auth: /auth/login, /auth/signup, /auth/logout, /auth/guest, /auth/github, /auth/me
• Posts: /posts (feed), /posts/:id, like/comment/delete
• Users: /users (discover), /users/:username, /users/requests, /users/settings
• Chat: /chat (conversations), /chat/:id, /chat/:id/messages

Scripts

• npm run dev → run with nodemon + tsx
• npm test → migrate test DB + run Vitest
• npm run test:watch → watch mode

Environment variables

Required for full functionality:

• DATABASE_URL (Postgres connection string)
• SESSION_SECRET
• CLIENT_URL (CORS)
• CORS_ORIGIN
• GITHUB_CLIENT_ID, GITHUB_CLIENT_SECRET
• SUPABASE_URL, SUPABASE_SERVICE_ROLE_KEY
• PORT (optional, default 3000)

Tests use .env.test (loaded in tests/setup.ts).