🚀 Building QuickClinic – A Scalable Java Microservices-Based Healthcare Platform

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Hey devs 👋
I’m currently working on a full-stack microservices project called QuickClinic – a modern, scalable healthcare booking platform built with Java + Spring Boot + React, using JWT, Kafka, Eureka, and Docker under the hood.

Here’s a quick dev log of what I’ve built so far and some of the real issues I faced and solved 💥

✅ Core Features Implemented So Far
🔐 OAuth2 + JWT Authentication (login/signup via gateway + token-based access)

🧑‍⚕️ User Role System: Patients, Doctors, Admins (with secured routes)

🏥 Microservices Setup:

UserAuth Service (authentication + profile)

Gateway API (JWT verification + routing)

Service Registry (Spring Eureka)

📋 User Dashboard (React + Tailwind UI, animated hospital-themed design)

✍️ User Operations: View, Update, Delete profile using secure endpoints

🔁 Booking System (in progress) for appointments

🔐 Spring Security Configuration using BCrypt + stateless sessions

⚙️ Client-side JWT Handling: Stored token, auto-injected in requests

🪲 Bugs I Faced & Solved

1. ❌ 403 Forbidden on Login (Even Though Token Was Correct) Root Cause: DelegatingPasswordEncoder expects an encoded password with a prefix like {bcrypt}.

Fix: Added the prefix and properly encoded the stored password using PasswordEncoderFactories.

1. ⚠️ JWT Not Working via Gateway Issue: Gateway was rejecting JWT even though individual microservices accepted it.

Solved by: Correctly forwarding Authorization headers and applying token filter at Gateway level.

1. 🚫 React Fetch Error on /get-details Reason: Missing token in localStorage or token expiration.

Fix: Added secure token storage and toast-based error handling for 401 errors.

1. 🔄 updateUserDetails Response Was Too Heavy Changed the API to return only a success message instead of full user object to reduce payload.

💡 Lessons Learned
Stateless authentication can be tricky with Spring Security, especially across services.

Encoders matter! Prefixes like {bcrypt} aren’t optional.

JWT debugging needs both backend and frontend coordination.

You don’t need to return full objects after an update — just a clear success message does the job!

🛠️ Next Steps
Implement appointment booking module

Add Kafka messaging for logging, email, or async tasks

Dockerize each microservice and set up Docker Compose

Add admin panel, patient-doctor matching, and real-time notifications

📢 Final Thoughts
I’m building this project not just to practice microservices, but to simulate a real production-grade system with all its complexity — and I’m learning a ton on the way.

If you're into Spring Boot, microservices, and full-stack Java, let’s connect! I'd love to hear your feedback or collaborate 🚀