📘 ITU-MiniTwit: Project Overview

Welcome to the ITU-MiniTwit project! 🚀 This project is a simplified clone of Twitter, developed as part of the ITU DevOps course. It demonstrates modern development practices, including micro-blogging features, CI/CD pipelines, containerization with Docker, and simulator-driven testing.

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📝 Table of Contents

1. Project Overview
2. Features
3. Architecture
4. Setup & Installation
5. CI/CD Pipeline
6. Simulator Integration
7. Deployment & Releases
8. Future Improvements
9. License

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🌟 Project Overview

ITU-MiniTwit is a micro-blogging platform that allows users to:

• Register and manage accounts.
• Post short messages (tweets).
• Follow and unfollow other users.
• View personal and public timelines.

This project includes:

• A web application for user interaction.
• A simulator API to emulate user behavior and load.
• CI/CD pipelines for automated testing, building, and deployment.

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✨ Features

✅ User Registration & Login
✅ Secure password hashing with BCrypt
✅ Post and view messages
✅ Follow/Unfollow users
✅ Personal and public timelines
✅ Real-time data updates through shared database
✅ Full CI/CD pipeline with automated weekly releases

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🏗️ Architecture

+------------------+      +--------------------+
|   Web App (:5000)| <--> | Shared Database     |
+------------------+      +--------------------+
         ↑                          ↑
         |                          |
         ↓                          ↓
+------------------+      +--------------------+
|Simulator API (:5001)|   | CI/CD Pipelines     |
+------------------+      +--------------------+

• Web App: User interface to interact with the platform.
• Simulator API: Simulates user interactions like tweeting and following.
• Database: Shared SQLite database to synchronize data between the web app and simulator.
• CI/CD Pipelines: Handles build, test, release, and deployment stages automatically.

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🖥️ Setup & Installation

Prerequisites:

• Docker & Docker Compose
• Java 17 & Maven
• GitHub account for CI/CD integration

🚀 Quick Start:

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/your-username/itu-minitwit.git
   cd itu-minitwit

2. Build and run with Docker Compose:

   docker-compose up --build

3. Access the app:
   • Web Application: http://localhost:5000
   • Simulator API: http://localhost:5001

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🔄 CI/CD Pipeline

We use GitHub Actions for our CI/CD setup. Key stages include:

• Build: Compiles the Java application and builds Docker images.
• Test: Runs unit and integration tests.
• Release: Weekly automatic releases every Friday at 12:00 UTC.
• Deploy: Pushes images to Docker Hub and deploys to production servers.

👉 Why GitHub Actions?

• Fully integrated with GitHub
• Free for public repositories
• Extensive community support
• Simple YAML configuration

For detailed pipeline configuration, check out the ci-cd.yml file.

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🎮 Simulator Integration

The Simulator API runs on port 5001 and interacts with the main application to:

• Register users
• Post messages
• Follow and unfollow users

Why a simulator?
✅ Load testing
✅ Behavior simulation for active timelines
✅ Real-time monitoring via the web interface

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🚢 Deployment & Releases

• Weekly automated releases are created on GitHub.
• Docker images are pushed to Docker Hub.
• Production deployment is automated via SSH and Docker Compose.

🔔 Access the latest release:

View GitHub Releases

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🙌 Acknowledgments

• Developed as part of the ITU DevOps course
• Special thanks to course instructors and teaching assistants!

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🚀 Get Involved!

Want to contribute?

• Fork the repo
• Create a feature branch
• Submit a pull request

Happy coding! 💻🎉

-- readme generated by chat gpt --