Pod Pirate
Pod Pirate is a full-stack podcast demo with a Next.js frontend and Spring Boot backend, featuring secure auth, podcast management, and cloud deployment.
🏴☠️ Pod Pirate — Building a Full-Stack Podcast Platform
Pod Pirate is a full-stack podcast platform demo designed to showcase how a modern, production-style web application is built, secured, and deployed in the cloud.
It combines a Next.js + React frontend with a Spring Boot backend, focusing on clean architecture, real-world authentication flows, scalable media handling, and cloud-native deployment.
This project reflects how I approach full-stack systems in real products—not just features, but maintainability, security, and operational concerns.
🎯 Project Goals
The goal of Pod Pirate was to build more than a CRUD demo.
I wanted to demonstrate:
- Secure authentication and role-based access
- Real media uploads and streaming at scale
- Clean separation between frontend and backend
- Cloud-friendly architecture and deployment
- Production-style code organization
🧠 What Pod Pirate Does
Pod Pirate supports three main roles, each with clear responsibilities.
Listeners
- Browse and search public podcasts
- Stream episodes using a persistent audio player
- Continue playback while navigating the app
- Install the app as a Progressive Web App (PWA)
Creators
- Create and manage podcast shows
- Upload episodes with artwork and metadata
- Manage content from a dedicated dashboard
Administrators
- Moderate podcasts and episodes
- Manage users and roles
- Monitor platform health and system behavior
🏗️ Architecture Overview
Pod Pirate follows a classic decoupled full-stack architecture.
Next.js (React, TypeScript) ↓ REST API Spring Boot (Java 21) ↓ MongoDB + Azure Blob Storage
Frontend
- Next.js App Router
- React 19 with TypeScript
- Tailwind CSS + shadcn/ui
- NextAuth.js for authentication
- PWA support and responsive design
Backend
- Spring Boot 3.4
- Java 21
- MongoDB for flexible schema design
- Spring Security + JWT authentication
- RESTful APIs with role-based authorization
Media Storage
- Azure Blob Storage for audio files
- Secure, time-limited upload URLs
- CDN-ready delivery for large media files
🔐 Security & Authentication
Security was treated as a first-class concern.
- JWT-based authentication
- Email verification and password reset flows
- Role-based access (Listener, Creator, Admin)
- Protected frontend routes and backend endpoints
- Explicit CORS and origin controls for cloud deployment
This mirrors patterns commonly used in production SaaS platforms.
🎧 Audio & Media Handling
Handling large media files was a key challenge.
- Episodes can be up to 1GB
- Uploads go directly to Azure Blob Storage
- Backend issues short-lived, secure upload URLs
- Streaming URLs are protected and scoped per user
This avoids routing large files through the backend and keeps the system scalable.
☁️ Cloud Deployment
Pod Pirate is designed to run fully in the cloud.
Frontend
- Deployed on Netlify (Vercel-compatible)
- Static + server-rendered Next.js pages
- Environment-based configuration
Backend
- Deployed on Azure App Service
- Externalized configuration via environment variables
- MongoDB Atlas or self-hosted MongoDB support
The project is deployment-ready, not just locally runnable.
📁 Code Organization
Both frontend and backend follow clean, modular structures:
- Feature-based organization
- Clear separation of concerns
- Shared DTOs and mappers on the backend
- Typed API clients and server actions on the frontend
The focus was on readability, scalability, and ease of change.
🚧 Current Status & Roadmap
Most core features are complete. Planned enhancements include:
- Advanced analytics dashboards
- Social features (comments, likes, sharing)
- Episode transcripts with search
- Playlists and collections
- Multi-language support
💡 Why This Project Matters
Pod Pirate represents how I build real systems:
- Not just UI, but end-to-end workflows
- Not just APIs, but secure, cloud-ready services
- Not just features, but clean architecture
It’s a practical demonstration of full-stack engineering with modern tools and production concerns in mind.
🔗 Source Code
The full source code is available on GitHub:
👉 https://github.com/berlinbruno/pod-pirate
✍️ Final Thoughts
Pod Pirate was built as a portfolio project, but it’s structured like a real product.
If you’re interested in how I design, build, and deploy full-stack applications—with an emphasis on clean code and cloud-native thinking—this project captures that approach end to end.