Node/Express Backend for a Sensory Experiential-Commerce Platform

Overview

The backend service for a sensory/experiential-commerce platform: a production-grade Node.js/Express REST API on MongoDB. It covers authentication, a social feed, assessments/results, notifications, admin and support tooling, with hardened security middleware and full DevOps scaffolding.

The Challenge

The platform blends commerce with social and assessment-style experiences, so its backend needed broad domain coverage (users, feeds, interviews/tests and results, notifications, support) behind robust auth and security, documented APIs, and a deployment pipeline ready for production.

What We Built

An Express application following a layered architecture, controllers, models, routes/v1, middlewares, services, validations and config. Functional coverage spans authentication (auth.controller), users and staff/admin management, a social feed with likes (likeFeed, seenFeed) and notifications (noti.controller), an assessment domain (interview, result, subResult, subTest models), FAQ, support and “touch” interactions. Security and reliability are first-class: passport/passport-jwt auth with a role system, helmet, cors, express-rate-limit, express-mongo-sanitize, xss-clean, and joi request validation; data is modeled in MongoDB via mongoose with reusable toJSON and paginate plugins. Cross-cutting concerns include winston/morgan logging, node-cron scheduled jobs, node-cache, email via nodemailer, image processing with sharp, file uploads (multer/express-fileupload), and Firebase Admin integration. The API is self-documented with swagger-jsdoc/swagger-ui-express. Operationally it ships a Dockerfile, separate dev/prod/test docker-compose files, a PM2 ecosystem.config.json, AWS Parameter Store config (aws-param-store), Travis CI, Jest/Supertest tests, and a full lint/format/husky setup.

Technologies & Approach

Built on a battle-tested Express + Mongoose + Passport/JWT foundation extended with comprehensive security middleware and validation, the service prioritizes correctness, security and operability. Swagger docs, layered structure, automated tests and multi-environment Docker/PM2 tooling make it a maintainable, production-ready backend.

Outcome / Impact

Delivered the full-featured, security-hardened backend powering the platform’s commerce, social-feed and assessment experiences, documented, tested, and ready to deploy across dev/prod/test environments.

Capabilities Demonstrated

• Production REST API design (Express + MongoDB/Mongoose)
• JWT/Passport authentication with role-based access
• Hardened security stack (helmet, rate limiting, sanitization, XSS protection, Joi validation)
• Social feed, notifications and assessment/result domains
• OpenAPI/Swagger documentation and Jest/Supertest coverage
• Production DevOps: Docker, PM2, AWS Parameter Store, CI