🌍 News Insights Web Application - VibePress

A reactive web application that lets you explore the latest news articles, view detailed article information with related reddit posts and save your favorite articles and sources.

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📚 Outline

• Features
  • General Features
  • Article Detail Pages
  • User Account Page
  • Demo Video
• Technologies Used
  • Backend
  • Database
  • APIs
  • Frontend
• Application Architecture
  • Overview
  • Key Modules
  • Database Structure
• How to Run
  • Prerequisites
  • Steps
• Endpoints
  • Public Endpoints
• Testing
  • Unit Tests
• Folder Structure
• Future Enhancements
• Contributors

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Features

General Features

• View top headlines from your country.
• Search for articles using a custom query.
• Explore:

Article Detail Pages

• Article information.
• Related Reddit Posts.
• Sentiment analysis visualized with pie charts.

User Account Page

• View your saved articles.
• View your favorite sources.

Demo Video

To take a look at the current state of the project, you can follow this link to a demo video. https://my.hidrive.com/share/u9t05xiqy2 Info: This project does not focus on the frontend and it is also still in progress.

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Technologies Used

Backend

• Spring Boot with Kotlin.
• Spring WebFlux for reactive, non-blocking programming.
• R2DBC for working with the database reactively.
• Flyway for database migrations.
• Docker for containerized database management.

Database

• R2DBC database with ReactiveCrudRepository for seamless reactive interactions.

APIs

• News API: Fetch top headlines and search for articles.
• Reddit API: Retrieve Reddit posts and comments.
• Google Natural Language API: Perform sentiment analysis for articles and Reddit discussions.

Frontend

• Thymeleaf templates for dynamic HTML rendering.
• CSS for styling.

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Application Architecture

Overview

This project is a reactive Spring Boot application that integrates multiple APIs and services to deliver a seamless user experience. The backend handles API calls, sentiment analysis, and database interactions, while the frontend renders the content dynamically.

Key Modules

1. Controller Layer:
   • Handles HTTP requests, routes, and prepares data for views by delegating logic to services.
2. Service Layer:
   • API Services: Manage interactions with external APIs like NewsAPI, RedditAPI, and Google Natural Language API.
   • Database Services: Handle application logic for database entities and interact with repositories.
3. Repository Layer:
   • Communicates with the R2DBC database reactively.

Database Structure

The database consists of the following tables:

• ARTICLE: Stores articles with title, author, content, and sentiment attributes.
• REDDIT_POST: Contains Reddit posts with link, title, content, and sentiment attributes.
• REDDIT_COMMENT: Contains Reddit Comments with content and sentiment attributes.
• PROJECT_USER: Tracks users and their preferred sources.
• COUNTRY: Stores country information and associated sources.
• ARTICLE_REDDIT_POST: Links articles to Reddit posts.
• USER_SAVED_ARTICLE: Saves articles that are bookmarked by users.
• COUNTRY_ARTICLE: Links articles to countries.

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How to Run

Prerequisites

• Java 17 or higher (tested with Java 21).
• Docker installed and running.
• Kotlin setup.

Steps

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/JuliaTrumpp/vipepress.git  
   cd article.analysis  

2. Start the database with Docker:

   docker-compose up -d

3. Build and run the application:

   ./gradlew bootRun  

4. Access the application in your browser:

   http://localhost:8080  
   

Endpoints

Public Endpoints

• Home Page: /
  • Displays top headlines, option to search articles by query + menu bar options.
• Article Detail Page: /article/{article-id}
  • Displays article details, Reddit posts, and sentiment pie charts.
• Account Account: /account/{name}
  • Displays saved articles and favorite sources.

Testing

Unit Tests

Service layer are covered with unit tests to ensure functionality.

Folder Structure

  ```bash 
src/
├── main/
│   ├── kotlin/
│   │   └── com.stacs.article.analysis/
│   │       ├── backend/
│   │       │   ├── apis/
│   │       │   │   ├── ArticleApiDataClasses.kt
│   │       │   │   ├── ...
│   │       │   ├── Article/
│   │       │   │   ├── Article.kt
│   │       │   │   ├── ArticleRepository.kt
│   │       │   │   └── ArticleService.kt
│   │       │   └── ...
│   │       │   
│   │       ├── frontend_controller/
│   │       │   ├── AccountPageController.kt
│   │       │   ├── ...
│   │       ├── libarys/
│   │       │   └── UsefullFunctionsLibrary.kt
│   │       └── Application.kt
│   ├── resources/
│   │   ├── db.migration/
│   │   │   └── V1_initial_setup.sql
│   │   ├── static/
│   │   │   ├── styles_account.css
│   │   │   └── ...
│   │   ├──templates/
│   │   │   ├── account.html
│   │   │   └── ...
│   │   └── application.properties
└── test/
    └── same structure as main for tests

Future Enhancements

• Sentiment analysis with Google Language Api
• Graphs
  • to visualize articles (by category, length, source, number of quotes on reddit(?))
  • the article's and post's sentiment
• Country detail page:
  • information and filter articles by category, language, date or source + sort them
  • average sentiment of articles + in country's subreddit
• Country comparison
  • comparison of Reddit (country's subreddits) and article sentiments (also by category)
  • number of articles (top headlines) + other statistics
• Save source on article page and account page
• Sources detail page:
  • list of last articles, which language/ country
• Possibility to delete articles/ other data base entries

Contributors

Julia Trumpp