Vivaleve

Dating & Social Platform for STI Community

A privacy-first modular monolithic backend API and real-time social engine for individuals living with STI conditions (HPV, HIV, HSV-1/2)—enabling match discovery via swipes, post feeds, winks, blogs, events, first-date ideas, and Stripe-powered premium messaging and private albums.

Key Impact: Flushes thousands of buffered social interactions per minute with sub-20ms database queries

System Architecture & Design Patterns

Architecture Pattern

Modular Monolith with Write-Behind Redis Buffering, RabbitMQ Queues & Stripe Webhooks

Strategic Rationale

Maintains clear domain boundary separation across feature modules while offloading high-traffic social writes to Redis buffers and heavy async tasks (emails, notifications, media processing) to isolated RabbitMQ worker consumers.

Technical Highlights

Write-behind Redis post like buffer (bufferLike/bufferUnlike) with node-cron periodic flush to MongoDB
Asynchronous RabbitMQ message queues for signup emails, post dispatches, comment caching, and notification delivery
Stripe webhook pipeline registered prior to express.json() for uncorrupted raw buffer signature verification
Sharp image processing pipeline creating blurred preview variants for privacy-protected media before premium unlock

Engineering Challenges & Solutions

Challenge 1

High-traffic post like actions created excessive synchronous MongoDB write contention and HTTP event loop latency during peak social activity.

Engineered Solution

Architected a write-behind Redis buffering layer (bufferLike/bufferUnlike) where displayed counts compute dynamically from MongoDB + Redis delta, flushed periodically via node-cron (*/1 * * * *).

Challenge 2

Stripe webhook signature verification failures caused by standard Express automatic JSON body parsing.

Engineered Solution

Mounted the raw-body Stripe webhook route (/api/stripe/webhook) prior to global express.json() middleware, ensuring payload buffer integrity.

Tech Stack

TypeScriptNode.jsExpress.jsMongoDBMongooseRedisRabbitMQSocket.ioStripeZodSharpDocker

Core Capabilities

Mutual swipe match discovery algorithm based on gender preferences, livingWith STI status, and location
Write-behind post like buffering in Redis (bufferLike/bufferUnlike) flushed asynchronously to MongoDB via node-cron
Asynchronous RabbitMQ message broker managing email queues, post processing, comment caching, and notification dispatches
Stripe billing pipeline with checkout sessions, packages, and raw-body webhook signature verification
Granular Role-Based Access Control (USER, ADMIN, SUPER_ADMIN) & premium membership gating (blogs, private albums, messaging)
Sharp image processing generating blurred preview variants for privacy-protected user media