blog

📝 Go Blog Engine

A modular, full stack blog application built in Go, following Clean Architecture principles.

This project demonstrates a well structured backend serving a server side rendered frontend, with clear separation of concerns, CLI tooling, and database migrations.

✨ Features

• User authentication & authorization
• Admin panel for content management
• Article CRUD operations
• Server-side rendered HTML using Go templates
• PostgreSQL-backed persistence
• Database migrations with Goose
• CLI powered application commands
• Modular architecture with clear boundaries

🧱 Architecture Overview

The application follows a layered, modular structure inspired by Clean Architecture:

├── cmd/                # CLI commands (serve, migrate, seed)
├── internal/
│   ├── domain/         # Core business entities
│   ├── repository/     # Data access layer
│   ├── service/        # Business logic
│   ├── handler/        # HTTP handlers
│   └── middleware/     # HTTP middleware
├── templates/          # Server-side HTML templates
├── static/             # CSS, JS, assets
├── migrations/         # Goose migration files
└── config/             # Configuration management

Design Principles

• Clear separation between domain, service, and infrastructure
• Dependency direction pointing inward (core independent from frameworks)
• CLI based application lifecycle management
• Explicit database migrations
• Minimal global state

🛠 Tech Stack

• Language: Go (1.18+)
• Architecture: Modular Service–Repository pattern
• Database: PostgreSQL
• Migrations: Goose
• CLI Framework: Cobra
• Frontend: Go HTML Templates
• Styling: Bootstrap 4
• Client-side Enhancements: jQuery

🚀 Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Go 1.18+
• PostgreSQL (running locally or via Docker)

🔧 Installation & Setup

1️⃣ Clone the Repository

git clone https://github.com/realwebdev/blog.git
cd blog

2️⃣ Configure Database

Ensure PostgreSQL is running.

Update config.yml with your database credentials:

database:
  host: localhost
  port: 5432
  user: postgres
  password: postgres
  name: blog

3️⃣ Run Database Migrations

Initialize the database schema:

go run main.go migrate up

4️⃣ Seed Database (Optional)

Populate the database with sample users and articles:

go run main.go seed

⚠️ Default admin password is password123 unless ADMIN_PASSWORD environment variable is set.

5️⃣ Start the Server

go run main.go serve

Visit:

http://localhost:8080

(or the port defined in your configuration)

🔐 Authentication

• Role based access control
• Admin only content management
• Secure password handling (bcrypt recommended if implemented)

📦 CLI Commands

🧪 Testing

If applicable:

go test ./...

(Add this section only if you have test coverage — otherwise omit or clarify scope.)

📌 Design Decisions

• Server-side rendering chosen for simplicity and SEO-friendliness.
• Goose for migration version control.
• Cobra to separate application lifecycle commands cleanly.
• Clean Architecture to ensure framework-independent core logic.

🚧 Future Improvements

• API versioning
• REST/JSON API alongside SSR
• Integration tests
• Structured logging
• Dockerized deployment
• CI/CD pipeline
• Pagination & search
• Caching layer (Redis)

👨‍💻 Purpose

This project showcases:

• Backend architecture design in Go
• Database migration management
• Clean separation of business logic
• Full stack Go application development