📚 CoolReads

CoolReads is a web application inspired by Goodreads, designed to offer a more user-friendly and socially engaging platform for book lovers. Users can manage their personal libraries, track their reading progress, explore book recommendations, and connect with other readers.

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🚀 Features

• 🧾 Personal Bookshelves: Create and customize your own bookshelves with names and organization methods that suit you.
• 📈 Track Reading Progress: Set reading statuses (Read, Want to Read, Currently Reading, Did Not Finish) and track how far you’ve gone.
• 🗣️ Reviews and Ratings: Share your thoughts on books you've read and engage with community reviews.
• 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Social Features: Add friends, interact with other users’ reviews, and receive notifications.
• 🛠️ Advanced Search: Find books or users instantly with a responsive search interface.
• 📊 Book Statistics: Authors and users can view detailed analytics on book interactions.
• 🌐 Multilingual Support: Interface available in English and Portuguese.
• 🎨 Modern UI: Vue.js-powered frontend with dynamic and responsive components.

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🧱 Tech Stack

Frontend

• Vue.js – Modern JavaScript framework for building UI
• Vuex – State management
• Vue Router – Routing and navigation
• Axios – HTTP requests
• Figma – UI prototyping

Backend

• Java & Spring Boot – Core business logic, REST API
• Spring Security – Authentication and authorization
• Spring Data JPA (Hibernate) – ORM and database interaction
• Redis – In-memory cache for performance
• PostgreSQL – Relational database

DevOps & Deployment

• Docker – Containerization
• Ansible – Infrastructure automation
• Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) – Scalable cloud deployment
• GitHub Actions – CI/CD pipeline

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🏗️ Architecture

The project follows a layered architecture:

• Presentation Layer: Vue.js frontend + Spring MVC REST API
• Business Layer: Core logic in Spring Boot
• Integration Layer: Spring Data JPA (Hibernate)
• Data Layer: PostgreSQL + Redis

You can find system architecture diagrams and class designs in the /VPP folder.

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⚙️ Setup & Deployment

Local Development

1. Frontend:

   cd CoolReads/frontend
   npm install
   npm run serve

2. Backend:

   cd CoolReads/backend/coolreads
   sudo sh start.sh
   mvn spring-boot:run

Docker

To build and run containers locally:

docker-compose up --build

GKE Deployment (via Ansible)

1. Set your Google Cloud credentials.
2. Use Ansible to deploy:

   cd backend/ansible
   ansible-playbook gke-cluster-create.yml
   ansible-playbook coolreads-deploy.yml

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🖼️ Screenshots

Here are some example views of the application in action. (Insert your images in this section)

Home View

Categories View

Detail View

Bookshelf View

To include your own screenshots, add them to a screenshots/ folder in the root of the repository and update the image paths above accordingly.

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📂 Project Structure

CoolReads/
├── backend/
│   ├── src/
│   ├── ansible/
│   └── VPP/
├── frontend/
│   └── src/
│       ├── components/
│       ├── views/
│       └── services/
└── Dockerfile

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🧪 Usability & Evaluation

CoolReads was evaluated through:

• Expert-based heuristic evaluation
• Cognitive walkthroughs
• Empirical testing with early-stage users

Findings and user-centered design insights are documented in the CoolReads___Arquitetura.pdf.

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📜 License

This project was developed as part of the Arquiteturas Aplicacionais course at University of Minho. All rights reserved to the student authors.

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👥 Authors

• André Lucena
• Carlos Machado
• Gonçalo Sousa
• João Castro
• José Barbosa