Chirpy 🐦

Chirpy is a lightweight, scalable social media API server built with Go and PostgreSQL, inspired by Twitter. Developed as part of the Boot.dev server-building course, this project demonstrates robust, production-ready backend practices, including secure authentication, database migrations, JWT handling, and RESTful API design.

🌟 Features

• User Authentication: Secure signup, login, and JWT token management.
• Secure Endpoints: Protect endpoints with JWT authentication and refresh tokens.
• Chirp Management: Post, retrieve, filter, sort, and delete chirps (tweets).
• Webhook Integration: Upgrade user statuses securely via webhook events from third-party services (e.g., Polka).
• Refresh Tokens: Issue and revoke refresh tokens securely stored in PostgreSQL.
• Advanced Queries: Sort and filter chirps by creation date and author ID.
• Admin Metrics: Monitor and reset application metrics (development only).

🚀 Why Chirpy?

Chirpy serves as an excellent example for anyone looking to understand:

• How to build secure RESTful APIs using Go.
• JWT authentication and secure handling of user sessions.
• Managing database migrations using Goose.
• Clean, maintainable Go project structure.
• Integration and security best practices for webhooks and API keys.

Whether you're learning backend development or building your own Go APIs, Chirpy provides a solid foundation to learn from and extend.

🛠 Tech Stack

• Go (1.24+)
• PostgreSQL
• JWT (golang-jwt)
• bcrypt for password hashing
• Goose for database migrations
• SQLC for type-safe queries
• dotenv for managing environment variables

📚 Setup & Installation

Step 1: Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/chirpy.git
cd chirpy

Step 2: Set up environment variables

Create a .env file in your project's root:

DB_URL=your_postgres_db_url
JWT_SECRET=your_jwt_secret
POLKA_KEY=your_polka_api_key
PLATFORM=dev

Generate a strong secret for JWT and Polka:

openssl rand -base64 64

Polka is used to demonstrate webhooks and isn't a real provider so use any generated API key in the env)

Step 3: Run database migrations

goose postgres "$DB_URL" up

Step 4: Install dependencies and run

go mod tidy
go build -o out && ./out

Server runs on http://localhost:8080

🔑 API Endpoints

Users

• POST /api/users - Create user
• PUT /api/users - Update user's email/password
• POST /api/login - User login, returns JWT & refresh token
• POST /api/refresh - Refresh JWT using refresh token
• POST /api/revoke - Revoke refresh token

Chirps

• POST /api/chirps - Create chirp
• GET /api/chirps - Retrieve all chirps (supports filtering and sorting)
• GET /api/chirps/{chirpID} - Retrieve chirp by ID
• DELETE /api/chirps/{chirpID} - Delete chirp by ID (authenticated)

Webhooks

• POST /api/polka/webhooks - Upgrade user to "Chirpy Red" status (requires API key)

Admin (Development Only)

• GET /admin/metrics - Display metrics
• POST /admin/reset - Reset metrics and delete all users (dev only)

🎓 Attribution

Chirpy was created following the Boot.dev HTTP Server course, which provides comprehensive guidance on building production-ready web servers.

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Happy chirping! 🐤