Anonymous Confession & Advice Wall

Overview

A simple web application for users to register, log in, and post anonymous confessions or advice. Users can view all posts and like them. Posts are anonymous to the public, using Java Servlets, JDBC, MySQL, and a React/Next.js frontend.

Features

• User registration and login/logout
• Post anonymous confessions or advice (login required)
• View all posts
• Like posts
• Database persistence

Not Included: User profiles, comments, admin moderation, JWT/OAuth.

Technology Stack

Backend

• Java Servlets
• JDBC
• Relational Database (MySQL)
• HTTP Sessions (for login)
• JSON (REST API)

Frontend

• React or Next.js
• Fetch API
• Plain CSS

Tools

• Git & GitHub
• Postman (API testing)

Database Design

Table: users

Column	Type	Description
id	INT (PK)	Auto-increment
username	VARCHAR	Unique
password	VARCHAR	Hashed
created_at	TIMESTAMP	Auto

Table: confessions

Column	Type	Description
id	INT (PK)	Auto-increment
content	TEXT	Confession text
likes	INT	Default 0
user_id	INT (FK)	References users
created_at	TIMESTAMP	Auto

Table: advice

Column	Type	Description
id	INT (PK)	Auto-increment
content	TEXT	Advice text
likes	INT	Default 0
user_id	INT (FK)	References users
created_at	TIMESTAMP	Auto
confession_id	INT (FK)	References confession

Note: user_id is never exposed in API responses for anonymity.

API Endpoints

Base URL: /api

Authentication

• POST /auth/register
  Request: { "username": "john", "password": "123456" }

• POST /auth/login (creates HTTP session)

• POST /auth/logout

Confessions

• POST /confessions (login required, create)

• GET /confessions (get all)

• POST /confessions/{id}/like (like)

Advice

• POST /advice (login required, create)

• GET /advice (get all)

• POST /advice/{id}/like (like)

API Response Model (Example)

{
  "id": 1,
  "content": "I feel lost about my future",
  "likes": 3,
  "createdAt": "2025-12-20T10:30:00"
}