Marginalia — Shared Weblog

A shared weblog application built with Go, Echo, PostgreSQL, and vanilla JavaScript.

Users can publish public or private entries, selectively share private posts with other users, and comment on posts they can access.

Features

• User signup and login with JWT authentication
• Create public or private posts
• Share private posts with specific users
• Public post feed with title search and pagination
• Comments on accessible posts
• Delete your own posts and comments
• Image upload with size and type validation
• Protected routes for authenticated actions

Tech Stack

Layer	Technology
Backend	Go 1.26, Echo v5
Database	PostgreSQL, pgx
Migrations	golang-migrate
Authentication	JWT, bcrypt
Configuration	cleanenv, godotenv
Frontend	HTML, CSS, Vanilla JavaScript

Getting Started

Requirements

• Go 1.26+
• Docker (recommended) or a local PostgreSQL installation

1. Clone the repository

git clone git@github.com:kiarash86/Marginalia.git
cd Marginalia

2. Configure environment variables

Create a .env file in the project root:

DATABASE_URL=postgres://postgres:postgres@localhost:5432/weblog?sslmode=disable
JWT_KEY=change-this-secret
PORT=8080

Use a strong secret for JWT_KEY in any non-local environment.

3. Start PostgreSQL

Using Docker:

docker-compose up -d

This starts PostgreSQL 16 on localhost:5432 with the weblog database.

4. Run the backend

go run main.go

Database migrations run automatically on startup.

The API will be available at:

http://localhost:8080

5. Run the frontend

The frontend is a static HTML/CSS/JavaScript application.

Update frontend/config.js if needed:

window.MARGINALIA_CONFIG = {
  API_BASE: 'http://localhost:8080'
};

Then serve the frontend directory with any static file server, for example:

npx serve frontend

API Reference

All protected routes require an Authorization: Bearer <token> header.

Method	Path	Auth	Description
GET	/health	—	Health check
POST	/signup	—	Create an account
POST	/login	—	Log in
GET	/weblog	Yes	Feed with pagination and title search
POST	/weblog	Yes	Create a post
GET	/weblog/:id	Yes	Get a single accessible post
DELETE	/weblog/:id	Yes	Delete an owned post
POST	/weblog/:id/share	Yes	Share a private post
GET	/weblog/:id/comment	Yes	List comments
POST	/weblog/:id/comment	Yes	Add a comment
DELETE	/weblog/:id/comment/:commentId	Yes	Delete an authored comment
POST	/upload	Yes	Upload an image (max 5 MB)
GET	/uploads/*	—	Serve uploaded images

Project Structure

.
├── main.go
├── internal/
│   ├── auth/
│   ├── config/
│   ├── db/
│   ├── handlers/
│   ├── middlewares/
│   ├── migration/
│   ├── models/
│   └── repository/
├── frontend/
├── Dockerfile
└── docker-compose.yml

Known Limitations

• Posts cannot be edited; they must be deleted and recreated. This follows the original assignment requirements.
• No email verification or password reset flow.
• Upload validation currently checks file extensions rather than file contents, so it is not hardened for adversarial input.
• No automated test suite is included yet.

License

This project is provided for educational and portfolio purposes.