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Blogging Platform API

In short

A blog backend sounds basic, but drafts, slugs, tags, comments, permissions and search add up to a properly real API. It's the perfect project to show clean design end to end.

A fuller blogging backend — posts, comments, tags, drafts, and search — going beyond the earlier Blog API practice project into something portfolio-ready.

The purple blob editor places a finished magazine on the published pile, with drafts and a red pen nearby.

Think of it like this

The college magazine office

Writers submit drafts, the editor publishes the good ones, readers leave comments, and only the original writer can edit their own piece. Your blog API runs this same office, just with HTTP instead of paper.

Watch it happen

Build plan, one layer at a time

Schema

Auth

Posts CRUD

Comments

Deploy

1/6Design tables first: users, posts, tags, post_tags and comments, with foreign keys and indexes.

The big ideas

What you need to know

Drafts and publishing

A status field plus a publishedAt date. Public endpoints only return published posts.

Unique slugs

Turn "My First Post" into my-first-post, with a unique index and a suffix like -2 when it clashes.

Ownership checks

Logged in isn't enough. Only the author, or an admin, can edit or delete a post.

Pagination everywhere

Lists of posts and comments must be paginated, with a sensible default and a maximum page size.

See it in code

Walk through the code

1app.patch("/posts/:id", requireAuth, async (req, res) => {2  const post = await db.post.findUnique({ where: { id: req.params.id } });3  if (!post) return res.status(404).json({ error: "Post not found" });4  if (post.authorId !== req.user.id) {5    return res.status(403).json({ error: "You can only edit your own posts" });6  }7  const { title, body, status } = req.body; // validate these with zod first8  const updated = await db.post.update({9    where: { id: post.id },10    data: {11      title, body, status,12      publishedAt: status === "published" && !post.publishedAt ? new Date() : post.publishedAt,13    },14  });15  res.json(updated);16});