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.
- 🧾 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.
- Vue.js – Modern JavaScript framework for building UI
- Vuex – State management
- Vue Router – Routing and navigation
- Axios – HTTP requests
- Figma – UI prototyping
- 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
- Docker – Containerization
- Ansible – Infrastructure automation
- Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) – Scalable cloud deployment
- GitHub Actions – CI/CD pipeline
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.
-
Frontend:
cd CoolReads/frontend npm install npm run serve -
Backend:
cd CoolReads/backend/coolreads sudo sh start.sh mvn spring-boot:run
To build and run containers locally:
docker-compose up --build- Set your Google Cloud credentials.
- Use Ansible to deploy:
cd backend/ansible ansible-playbook gke-cluster-create.yml ansible-playbook coolreads-deploy.yml
Here are some example views of the application in action. (Insert your images in this section)
To include your own screenshots, add them to a screenshots/ folder in the root of the repository and update the image paths above accordingly.
CoolReads/
├── backend/
│ ├── src/
│ ├── ansible/
│ └── VPP/
├── frontend/
│ └── src/
│ ├── components/
│ ├── views/
│ └── services/
└── Dockerfile
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.
This project was developed as part of the Arquiteturas Aplicacionais course at University of Minho. All rights reserved to the student authors.
- André Lucena
- Carlos Machado
- Gonçalo Sousa
- João Castro
- José Barbosa