PowerBooks

Project Overview

PowerBooks is a SPA (Single Page Application) developed as a final project for the Web Development course. It allows users to explore a dynamic book catalog fetched from public APIs (Google Books / Open Library), search and filter by title, author, or category, borrow books with due-date tracking, manage a wishlist, and track their reading progress. The project followed an agile methodology with sprint planning, using GitHub Projects for the backlog and pull request code reviews. Key architectural decisions were made from the start: Next.js 15 with App Router was chosen to leverage hybrid rendering (SSR + CSR) and file-based routing. Authentication was handled with NextAuth.js integrated with Firebase (Firestore Auth and a custom adapter), supporting traditional login (email/password) and Google. A Clean Architecture was implemented separating the domain (core/domain), ports (core/ports), and infrastructure (infrastructure/), making the system easier to test and maintain. Global state is managed with Zustand (stores: auth, books, loans, wishlist, notifications) with partial localStorage persistence. Loans, wishlists, and notifications are stored in Firestore with collection-level RLS security rules. Firebase Cloud Messaging was used for real-time communication (book availability notifications). The frontend is fully responsive, built with Tailwind CSS, and includes security measures like input sanitization (DOMPurify), form validation with Zod, protected routes via Next.js middleware, and optional two-factor authentication (TOTP). Deployed on Vercel with a custom domain (powerbooks.space) and configured environment variables for Firebase, Resend (email delivery), and NextAuth. The team worked with daily stand-ups, weekly sprints, and retrospectives, delivering a functional MVP in 6 weeks.