Full-Stack Social Network

GitHub Repo Link

This project was built as a professional portfolio application, demonstrating production-grade architecture, atomic database operations, optimized queries, and clean separation between frontend, backend, and business logic.

It provides a social feed with infinite scrolling, dynamic post interactions, real-time UI updates, and profile management.

Project Highlights

• 100% Test Coverage: Guarantees robustness and integrity across all 500+ statements using Pytest and Django Test Client.
• Atomic Denormalization: Ensures data consistency and concurrency safety, preventing race conditions, using transaction.atomic and F() expressions
• Full Single-Page Application (SPA): All app flows are managed client-side using Vanilla JavaScript ES6 modular architecture and central state.
• JSON API: All app operations are handled by JSON endpoints.
• Improved User Experience: Features a fully implemented dark mode with user preference persistence, dynamic styling, and promise-based animations.
• Query Optimization: Implements custom composite indexes and double cursor based pagination, managing consistency even on larger datasets. N+1 problems are eliminated using select_related and prefetch_related to minimize database round trips.
• PostgreSQL Functional Constraints: Enforces case-insensitive uniqueness on usernames and emails at database level.

Core Features

• User Management: Registration, login and profile editing without page reloads.
• Social Feed: View posts from all users or from followed users.
• Interactions: Create, edit, and delete Posts and Comments. Like/Unlike posts with real time UI updates.
• Profiles: Follow/Unfollow users with real time UI updates.

Tech Stack

• Backend: Django 5.x / Python 3.13 + django-versatileimagefield.
• Frontend: JavaScript ES6 modules + Intersection Observer.
• Database: PostgreSQL.
• Testing: Pytest + Django Test Client.
• Deployment: Docker, Docker Compose, Gunicorn, Nginx, WhiteNoise.

Deployment Architecture

Component	Technology	Purpose
Web Server	Nginx 1.25-alpine	Reverse proxy, serves static/media, TLS termination
Application Server	Gunicorn 23 + Python 3.13	WSGI server, 4 workers, 300s timeout
Framework	Django 5.x	Full-stack backend + admin
Database	PostgreSQL 16-alpine	Persistent storage
Static Files	WhiteNoise (local) → Nginx (docker)	Zero-downtime asset delivery
Media/Thumbnails	versatileimagefield + Nginx	On the fly resizing, served directly
Configuration	python-dotenv + dj-database-url	Single codebase between local and docker
Containerization	Docker + Docker Compose	Reproducible environment

Screenshots

Setup And Run

Run Locally

git clone https://github.com/Landuche/social-network
cd social-network
cp .env.local.example .env.local # Configure your database on this file
python -m venv venv
venv\Scripts\activate
pip install -r requirements-local.txt
pip install python-magic-bin
python manage.py migrate
python manage.py collectstatic
python manage.py runserver

Run Container With Docker

cp .env.example .env # Configure your database on this file
docker compose up --build

Data Initialization

Seed Database Locally

Copy-Item -Path .\fixtures\assets\ -Destination .\media -Recurse -Force
python manage.py loaddata fixtures\initial_data.json

Seed Database On Docker

docker cp ./fixtures/assets/profile_pics/ social-network-web-1:/app/media
docker compose exec web python manage.py loaddata fixtures/initial_data.json

Testing

Test Locally

pip install -r requirements-test.txt
pytest -v -n auto

Test Container On Docker

docker compose exec web python -m pytest -v -n auto