🚀 Production-Ready Blog Backend with Auth, Image Uploads, Reactions & Nested Comments — Built with Node.js , MongoDB & Cloudinary

A complete and scalable backend for a modern blog platform. Built with Node.js, Express.js, and MongoDB, this backend features secure authentication, image uploads, full blog CRUD, reactions (like Facebook), and a nested comment system — all API-ready for frontend integration.

💡 Why Build a Blog Platform?

Blogging is timeless — and while Medium, Hashnode, and Dev.to dominate the space, building one from scratch gives you full control over architecture, security, and extensibility. I designed this backend to reflect real-world engineering standards, including:

• Clean RESTful APIs

• Scalable architecture

• JWT-based secure auth

• Cloud media handling

• Role and ownership-based restrictions

• Logging & error tracking

Whether you’re learning backend development or planning to launch a content-driven platform — this backend is ready to go live.

🧠 Key Features

✅ Secure Authentication

• Sign Up & Login with Email and Password

• Passwords are hashed using Bcrypt

• JWT token generation and verification

• Profile image upload (stored via Cloudinary)

• Token-protected routes for all sensitive APIs

🛠️ Tech Stack

Here’s what powers the platform:

• Node.js with Express.js

• MongoDB + Mongoose ODM

• JWT for token-based authentication

• Bcrypt for password encryption

• Multer + Cloudinary for image upload & cloud storage

• Winston + Morgan for logging

• Helmet, Rate Limiter, and CORS for added security

🔐 Authentication

✅ User Registration

• Users can register with:

  • Email

  • Password (hashed via bcrypt)

  • Profile Image (uploaded via Multer)

• User data is stored securely in MongoDB

🔑 Login

• Email & password-based login

• On successful authentication:

  • A JWT token is generated

  • Token is returned in the response for secure frontend storage (e.g., localStorage)

🔒 Protected Routes

• JWT is validated using middleware

• Access to blog management and user-specific data is restricted to authenticated users only

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🧾 Blog Management (CRUD APIs)

📌 Create Blog

• Endpoint to create a new blog post

• Accepts:

  • Blog Title

  • Description

  • Blog Image (uploaded using Multer)

• Store’s blog along with the Author reference

📥 Read Blogs

• Supports:

  • Pagination

  • Search by title

• Returns all blogs with metadata (image URL, author, created date)

✏️ Update Blog

• Only the blog owner can update

• Uses middleware to check blog ownership before proceeding

❌ Delete Blog

• Deletion is also ownership-protected

• Blogs are removed from the database after verification

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💬 Comments & Replies

• Fully nested comment system

• Supports:

  • Create, Read, Update, and Delete on both comments and replies

• Each comment is associated with:

  • A blog

  • A user

  • An optional parent comment (for nesting)

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🎭 Facebook-Style Reactions

• Users can react to blogs with:

  • 👍 Like

  • ❤️ Love

  • 😂 Haha

  • 😢 Sad

  • 😡 Angry

• One user can only have one reaction per blog

• Reaction data is stored and counted per blog

☁️ Cloudinary Integration

• Profile and blog images are uploaded via Multer

• Automatically stored and optimized in Cloudinary

• Cloud URLs are returned via API responses

• Ready for production — no local file dependencies

📊 Centralized Logging with Winston & Morgan

• Morgan logs all HTTP requests

• Winston handles application-level and error logging

• Separate logs for success, warning, and error levels

• All exceptions are caught via a global error handler

Ownership Checks

• Ownership checks ensure users can only update/delete their own blogs and comments

• Middleware-driven access control

🔁 Scalable Route Structure

• All routes are namespaced under /api/v1/

• Modular controller structure with separation of concerns

• Easy to maintain and extend as your app grows

⚙️ Future Improvements

• Add blog category/tags filtering

• Enable Socket.io-based live commenting

• Add admin dashboard for analytics

• Integrate email notifications (for comment replies or reactions)

💬 Let's Talk

I'm always up for feedback, improvements, and collaboration. If you're a:

• 👨‍💻 Developer learning backend

• 🚀 Startup founder building a blog platform

• 🎯 Recruiter looking for Node.js talent

Feel free to:

👉 Fork the repo
👉 Drop a ⭐ on GitHub
👉 Connect with me on LinkedIn
👉 Or drop a comment — I’d love to hear from you!

✨ Closing Thoughts

This blog backend wasn’t built as a demo — it was built to run in production. It reflects best practices, modern tooling, and a real-world approach to building scalable, secure systems.

If you’re building a full-stack blog platform or need a solid Node.js boilerplate, feel free to explore, clone, and build on top of it.

Thanks for reading! 👋

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📎 GitHub Repo: github.com/AnkitRaj20/blog-backend
📧 Let’s Connect: LinkedIn – Ankit Raj