Technical Aspects of Bytes

⚠️⚠️ Project is no longer maintained or hosted. The code is available on Github

If you are unaware of Bytes then check out this blog that I wrote:
Bytes - A Platform to share bite-sized learnings!

In this blog, I'll talk about the decision to choosing the tech stack, the database modeling of Bytes

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Table of Contents

• Tech Stack
  • NextJS
  • HarperDB
  • TailwindCSS
  • Firebase ( Storage and Authentication )
• Database Modelling
  • Schemas
    • User Schema
    • Post Schema
    • Tag Schema
    • Post_Tag Schema
  • Relationships
    • User <-> Post
    • Post <-> Tags
• Protecting Routes
• Socials

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Tech Stack

• NextJS
• HarperDB
• TailwindCSS
• Firebase

NextJS

• I chose to go with NextJS because it provides SSR support and Pages support out of the box.

HarperDB

• Since Bytes is made as a part of the HashNode-HarperDB hackathon, HarperDB acts as the Database for Bytes.
• The ability to queries in SQL way or NoSQL ways make it so easy to work with it.

TailwindCSS

• I always praise Tailwind in my blogs, It's easier to write CSS with all the utilites classes
• It also has Dark/Light theme support.

Firebase ( Storage and Authentication )

• Images for Bytes are handled by Firebase storage.
• All the URLs of the uploaded image are then stored in Harper
• Authentication is implemented using Firebase authentication as it handles also the user sessions gracefully.

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Database Modelling

• This is the fun part of working with databases for me. In this section, I'll share the schemas of the tables and their relationships.
• I have tried to keep the models and their relationships normalized.

Schemas

User Schema

export type UserSchema = {
  uid: string;
  email: string;
  name: string;
  username: string;
  verified: boolean;
  __createdtime__?: string;
  __updatedtime__?: string;
};

Post Schema

export type PostSchema = {
  pid: string;
  images: Array<string>;
  slug: string;
  title: string;
  uid: string;
  reactions: number;
  __createdtime__?: string;
  __updatedtime__?: string;
};

Tag Schema

export type TagType = {
  tid: string;
  name: string;
  color: string;
  image?: string;
  slug?: string;
  __createdtime__?: string;
  __updatedtime__?: string;
};

Post_Tag Schema

export type Post_Tag_Type = {
  pid: string;
  ptid: string;
  tid: string;
  __createdtime__?: string;
  __updatedtime__?: string;
};

Relationships

User <-> Post

• This relationship would be one-to-many
• So the Post Schema would have a foreign key i.e User's uuid as uid
• To get a user posts, I would just inner join User and Post on this uid

-- Gets all the Posts of a User
SELECT p.*,u.name,u.username FROM bytes.post AS p INNER JOIN bytes.user AS u ON u.uid=p.uid WHERE u.username='${username}'

Post <-> Tags

• The relationships b/w Post and Tags would be many-to-many.
• One post can have many tags and One tag can have posts
• I found this amazing article that shows various ways on implementing N:M relationships
  • Tags: Database schemas
• Based on it, I made separate table called Post_Tag that would contain a post id as pid and tag id as tid
• So now to get a post with all it's tags, I would write this SQL query

-- Gets all Tags for a Post
SELECT t.* FROM bytes.post_tag AS pt INNER JOIN bytes.tag AS t ON pt.tid=t.tid WHERE pt.pid='${post.pid}'

-- Get all Posts of a Tag
SELECT p.*,u.name,u.username FROM bytes.post_tag AS pt INNER JOIN bytes.post AS p ON pt.pid=p.pid INNER JOIN bytes.user AS u ON p.uid = u.uid WHERE pt.tid='${tag.tid}'

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Protecting Routes

• At the moment, Bytes has the following routes:
  • /
  • /upload
  • /login
  • /profile/:id/
  • /byte/:id/
  • /tag/:id/

Out of this routes, the /upload route is protected, It can be only accessed if the user is logged in.

• So to do so, I made a custom hook that would check for user.
• If user is logged in, it allows the user else redirect to "/login"

// useRequireLogin.tsx
const router = useRouter();

const { user, setUser } = useContext(UserContext);
const [loading, setLoading] = useState(false);

useEffect(() => {
  setLoading(true);
  firebase.auth().onAuthStateChanged(async (user) => {
    if (user) {
      const authUser = await getAuthUserFromHarper(user.uid);
      setUser({ ...authUser, isLoggedIn: true });
      setLoading(false);
      router.push(to);
    } else {
      setUser({});
      setLoading(false);
      router.push("/login");
    }
  });
}, []);

return { user, loading };

// ------------------------
// Using in the Upload Page
// /pages/upload.tsx
// ------------------------

const { user, loading } = useRequireLogin({ to: "/upload" });

if (loading || !user.isLoggedIn) return null;

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Hope you liked this blog and learned something from it.
There are still some improvements and features that I am adding to Bytes.

Socials

You can follow me on my Twitter - @Shubham_Verma18