Path to a stable backend..

[retrixe]

• File naming nomenclature
• Upvote authentication and confirmation
• Setup on Google Cloud Platform and implementation

[retrixe]

File naming nomenclature
My current plan is to create multiple folders under a GCP bucket named after different categories which can be retrieved through getCategories query to the server. Each file will be named with _ replacing spaces and -by- separating the author and the image name. Each image will be assigned a 4 digit ID which will be in the file name at the end: |<insert ID here>. This will be sufficient for storing 10k messages.

GraphQL query proposal: getFiles (takes optional or required category, TBD), getCategories

[retrixe]

Setup on Google Cloud Platform
Initially (only basic functionality right now, no file storage),

• Compute Engine with GraphQL server
• Cloud Datastore as database

Then (enables file storage),

• Compute Engine running GraphQL server
• Cloud Datastore as database
• Cloud Storage with files

Then (Cloud Function for GraphQL server and an ease of convenience function for adding an image to our app),

• Cloud Function to generate image IDs (for our internal usage)
• Cloud Function as GraphQL server
• Cloud Datastore as database
• Cloud Storage with files

[retrixe]

Upvote authentication and confirmation
This is a confusing topic where we can do one of two things, both of which are acceptable and equally simple to implement.

• Use Google authentication through Expo to enable upvotes and downvotes, store ID in SecureStore (Expo) and use it for upvotes/downvotes - One vote per image per user|requires user to login
• Fingerprint the device and use device fingerprint (Do not get confused with human fingerprints lol, its a unique ID for identifying a device) for authentication (I have a slight inclination towards this one as it is user intuitive and has little scope for exploitation) - One vote per image per device|no login requirement

In addition to these measures, we need to implement proper checks to see if the image exists before voting.

GraphQL query proposal: getUpvotes, upvoteAndQuery, downvoteAndQuery (take authentication token and our own app token (to safeguard from external API communication) as argument)