▶️ VidTube – Full-Stack Video Sharing Application

VidTube is a highly scalable, full-stack video-sharing application designed to replicate the core functionalities of YouTube. The project handles heavy media uploading, complex relational database structures, secure HTTP-only cookie authentication, and delivers a sleek, responsive UI.

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🚀 Features

• Robust Authentication: Secure registration and login using JWT (Access & Refresh tokens) and bcrypt password hashing. Tokens are securely stored in HTTP-Only cookies.
• Video Uploading & Streaming: Upload massive video files safely. Files are parsed via Multer and uploaded to Cloudinary using advanced chunked streams (upload_large) to prevent server crashes.
• Engagement Mechanics: Users can "Like" or "Dislike" videos and tweets, "Subscribe" to channels, and leave comments.
• Complex Aggregations: Uses advanced Mongoose Aggregation pipelines ($lookup, $addFields, $unwind) to dynamically calculate sub-counts, check if a user is subscribed, and fetch owner profiles in a highly performant way.
• Watch History & Liked Videos: Keeps track of what logged-in users have watched and provides specialized feeds for history and liked content.
• Community Tweets: A dedicated community tab where users can post, like, and delete text-based channel updates.
• Custom UI: A dark-theme, responsive video grid design fully implemented without relying on heavy UI component libraries.

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💻 Tech Stack

Frontend

• React.js (Bootstrapped with Vite for HMR and fast builds)
• React Router v6 (For seamless SPA routing)
• Axios (API requests with credentials/interceptors)
• Vanilla CSS (Custom CSS variables matching YouTube's dark schema)
• React-Icons (Scalable UI iconography)

Backend

• Node.js & Express.js (REST API development)
• MongoDB Atlas & Mongoose (NoSQL Database and ODM)
• Cloudinary (Cloud media storage for videos, thumbnails, and avatars)
• Multer (Local temp file handling before cloud ingestion)
• JWT & Bcrypt (Security and session management)

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🛠️ Installation & Setup

Prerequisites

Make sure you have Node.js and MongoDB installed or have a MongoDB URI from Atlas. You also need a Cloudinary account.

1. Clone the Repository

git clone https://github.com/your-username/vidtube.git
cd vidtube

2. Backend Setup

# In the root 'Backend' directory
npm install

# Create a .env file and add the following variables:
# PORT=8000
# MONGODB_URI=your_mongodb_connection_string
# CORS_ORIGIN=http://localhost:5173
# ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET=your_secret
# ACCESS_TOKEN_EXPIRY=1d
# REFRESH_TOKEN_SECRET=your_refresh_secret
# REFRESH_TOKEN_EXPIRY=10d
# CLOUDINARY_CLOUD_NAME=your_cloud_name
# CLOUDINARY_API_KEY=your_api_key
# CLOUDINARY_API_SECRET=your_api_secret

# Start the dev server
npm run dev

3. Frontend Setup

# Open a new terminal and navigate to the frontend folder
cd frontend
npm install

# Start the Vite React app
npm run dev

4. Open in Browser

Open your browser and navigate to http://localhost:5173.

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📁 Project Structure

• src/models/: Mongoose Schema definitions (User, Video, Tweet, Like, Subscription, Playlist, Comment).
• src/controllers/: Core logic for manipulating database objects.
• src/routes/: Express routes mapping endpoints perfectly to controller functions.
• src/middlewares/: JWT Token verifications, robust asyncHandler wrappers, and Multer file validators.
• frontend/src/pages/: Primary page views (Home, VideoPlayer, User Dashboard, Tweets, etc.).

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🤝 Contribution

Contributions, issues, and feature requests are welcome!

📝 License

This project is MIT licensed.