The latest articles on DEV Community by ATISHAYA JAIN (@atishaya2020gif). https://dev.to/atishaya2020gif https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=90,height=90,fit=cover,gravity=auto,format=auto/https:%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fuser%2Fprofile_image%2F4100681%2F8818eda5-4e1a-4552-88e0-ce99960c6c50.png https://dev.to/atishaya2020gif en ATISHAYA JAIN Sat, 29 Aug 2026 19:25:07 +0000 https://dev.to/atishaya2020gif/building-a-full-stack-social-media-platform-with-react-django-rest-framework-postgresql-440k https://dev.to/atishaya2020gif/building-a-full-stack-social-media-platform-with-react-django-rest-framework-postgresql-440k <p>Building a Full-Stack Social Media Platform with React, Django REST Framework &amp; PostgreSQL</p> <p>Building projects from tutorials is useful, but the real learning starts when you have to connect multiple systems together and make them behave like one application.</p> <p>That was the idea behind <strong>Pulse</strong>, a full-stack social media platform I built using <strong>React, Django REST Framework and PostgreSQL</strong>.</p> <p>The goal wasn't just to create a social media UI. I wanted to understand what happens behind the interface — authentication, API design, database communication, media storage, token management and deployment.</p> <h2> 🚀 What I Wanted to Build </h2> <p>I wanted Pulse to support the core functionality you'd expect from a modern social platform:</p> <ul> <li>User registration and login</li> <li>JWT-based authentication</li> <li>User profiles</li> <li>Creating posts</li> <li>Image uploads</li> <li>Likes and comments</li> <li>Search and filtering</li> <li>Responsive frontend</li> <li>A REST API connecting the frontend and backend</li> </ul> <p>The result became a project that taught me much more about full-stack architecture than I expected.</p> <h2> 🧰 The Technology Stack </h2> <p>The project is divided into a React frontend and a Django REST Framework backend.</p> <h3> Frontend </h3> <ul> <li>React 19</li> <li>Vite</li> <li>React Router</li> <li>Axios</li> <li>Tailwind CSS</li> <li>Framer Motion</li> <li>Lucide React</li> </ul> <h3> Backend </h3> <ul> <li>Django</li> <li>Django REST Framework</li> <li>Simple JWT authentication</li> <li>Django Filter</li> <li>PostgreSQL</li> </ul> <h3> Infrastructure </h3> <ul> <li>Neon PostgreSQL</li> <li>Cloudinary</li> <li>Vercel</li> <li>Render</li> </ul> <p>The frontend is deployed separately from the backend, which helped me understand how a real frontend-to-API architecture works.</p> <h2> 🏗️ The Architecture </h2> <p>The basic architecture looks like this:</p> <div class="highlight js-code-highlight"> <pre class="highlight plaintext"><code> text React Frontend │ Axios Requests │ JWT Tokens │ ▼ Django REST Framework │ ┌──────────┼──────────┐ │ │ │ ▼ ▼ ▼ PostgreSQL Cloudinary Authentication (Neon) Storage </code></pre> </div> python django react webdev