This is a Node.js microservices e-commerce platform for buying and selling digital items. It uses the publish/subscribe (pub/sub) communication pattern with an asynchronous event bus. The system supports order reservation with automatic expiration to prevent double-spending.

Additional features:

• User authentication and authorization
• Stripe-powered payments
• Per-service automated tests with Jest
• CI/CD pipelines via GitHub Actions

Tech Stack

• Typescript
• Node.js
• Express
• Next.js
• Docker
• Kubernetes
• Skaffold
• NATS Streaming Server
• Ingress Nginx
• Redis
• MongoDB + Mongoose
• Jest

Architecture

High-Level Overview

• At a high level, the app is composed of six microservices that communicate using the pub/sub pattern over an asynchronous event bus.
  • Each microservice runs inside its own Docker container.
  • Containers are deployed into Kubernetes Pods.
  • External traffic is routed into the correct Pod through Ingress Nginx.
  • Everything runs inside a single Kubernetes cluster.

Pub/Sub Communication

Services communicate through events using the publish/subscribe pattern, implemented with NATS Streaming.

• When something happens inside a service, it publishes an event describing that action.
• Other services subscribe to these events and react accordingly.

Key features of NATS Streaming in this system:

• Persistent append-only log for events, enabling replay
• Acknowledgement and retry mechanisms for reliable delivery
• Queue groups for round-robin load balancing across subscribers

Local Development

To get started locally, first ensure that you have Docker, Kubernetes, and Skaffold installed. You can start the app by running:

skaffold dev

When running locally, you can’t simply visit localhost:1234 in the browser because Kubernetes does not expose services on localhost. Instead, you can map a custom domain to your local machine.

1. Open your /etc/hosts file (it’s a file, not a folder).
2. Add an entry like:

127.0.0.1 mysite.com

1. Update your ingress-srv.yaml file so the host matches mysite.com.
2. Now, when you visit http://mysite.com in your browser, traffic will be routed by Nginx to the correct service inside Kubernetes.