oss-backend

Backend service for Anubhav, serves a server-rendered admin panel and a REST API consumed by the frontend.

Tech Stack

• Runtime: Node.js
• Framework: Express.js
• Database: MongoDB (via Mongoose)
• Auth: SuperTokens (EmailPassword + Session recipes) for frontend user auth
• Admin Auth: Custom session-based auth (express-session + connect-mongo) for the admin panel
• Templating: EJS — used exclusively for the admin panel
• Deployment: Vercel (serverless)

Architecture

How the code itself is organised — the routes → services → models layering, where new code belongs, and the conventions we hold PRs to — lives in ARCHITECTURE.md. Read it before your first contribution.

The rest of this section covers the URL surfaces the server exposes.

API (/api/anubhav/*)

REST endpoints consumed by the frontend. CORS is scoped only to these routes — allowed origins are maintained in constants.js.

Auth (/auth/*)

SuperTokens handles all frontend authentication routes here. CORS is also applied to this prefix.

Admin Panel (/admin/*)

Server-rendered EJS pages. No CORS — same-origin requests only. Protected by express-session backed by MongoDB via connect-mongo so sessions persist across Vercel serverless invocations.

Environments

Env	URL	NODE_ENV
Staging	https://oss-backend-staging.vercel.app	staging
Production	https://oss-backend.vercel.app	prod
Local	http://localhost:3000	staging

Running Locally

npm run server

Copy .env.example to .env and fill in the values before running.

API Docs

Staging: https://oss-backend-staging.vercel.app/api-docs/

Use staging for all frontend development and testing.

Environment Variables

Variable	Description
MONGOURI	MongoDB connection string
SESSION_SECRET	Secret for express-session
ADMINMAIL	Admin panel login email
ADMINHASH	Bcrypt hash of admin password
BACKEND_URL	Internal API base URL (e.g. http://localhost:3000/api/anubhav for local)
API_DOMAIN	Domain this server runs on (used by SuperTokens)
WEBSITE_DOMAIN	Frontend domain (used by SuperTokens)
SUPERTOKENS_CONNECTION_URI	SuperTokens managed service URI
SUPERTOKENS_API_KEY	SuperTokens API key
NODE_ENV	staging locally, prod on Vercel
PORT	Local port (default 3000)
GEMINI_API_KEY	Gemini key for AI article summaries. Without it the summary endpoints return 503

Optional summary tuning: GEMINI_MODEL (default gemini-2.5-flash), GEMINI_TIMEOUT_MS (default 20000), SUMMARY_PROCESSING_STALE_MS (default 120000), SUMMARY_DEBUG (true logs full summary bodies).