TinyPixel blog

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Running the project

Docker Run

1. Build and Start Services:

   docker-compose up --build

2. Access the Application: Open your browser and go to: http://localhost:8000

3. Fill in the data:

   • Before creating a blogpost you have to create an author.
   • Before creating a comment you have to have a blog post.
   • Authors that already have blogposts created under their accounts cannot be deleted

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It's possible to run the project without docker. I have included .htaccess for this purpose as well.

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Notes

• I have struggled a lot with the forms in the beginning. I'm sure there are better ways how to work with them, but this is the way I found, kind of understood and implemented.
• There may be better placement for the DTOs, but after reading multiple DDD vs. Symfony articles (not everybody agreed on their location) I figured this may be the best placement.
• Database has migrations but no seeders, so after spinning up the docker container the database is ready for work.
• The twigs were mostly made and then beautified using AI since the UI was not important, but I couldn't stand leaving it as plain html.
• The implementation of the dropdown in the form for blogpost creation was heavily discussed with ChatGPT, since approaches I tried did not work (initially I did the forms without DTOs - directly mapped to Models)
• I have opted to use UUIDs for the public data references. It may not be needed here, but I hate revealing sequential IDs, even though for performance issues they are still used as foreign keys and primary keys. They are not properly indexed here though.

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Possible Improvements

1. Testing:

   • I have not even started with unit tests.
   • I focused on making it properly and I have never tested symfony before, so I know im going to lose bonus points, but no tests for now.

2. Code Quality and Quality of life:

   • There are areas that deserve some love, such as verifying whether posts / users / authors exist during various actions.
   • SoftDeletes and/or cascades
   • Edits for comments, authors and blogs
   • More actions such as deleting comment authors and blog posts.

3. Performance:

   • Better Dockerfile with custom image
   • Optimized php/nginx/db settings
   • Caching (f.e.: Redis) for improved performance.

4. Security:

   • There is no auth, as the requirements did not require it, but it feels wrong not to do it.
   • No csrf protections
   • No xss protections (no html filtering for comments, names, titles, description, content, ...)

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License

PixelLicense 1.1 - Free to use in non-commercial, commercial and imaginary scenarios.