Building the TalkIt Backend

After establishing the concept for TalkIt in the previous post, it’s time to dive into the technical implementation, starting with the backend.

API Design

The TalkIt API needs to handle several core functions:

1. User management - registration, authentication, profiles
2. Talk creation - uploading, processing, and storing audio
3. Social features - following, feeds, notifications
4. Discovery - search, trending, recommendations

I’ve designed the API with RESTful principles, with these main endpoints:

/api/users - User management
/api/talks - Talk creation and retrieval
/api/follows - Following relationships
/api/feed - Personalized content feeds
/api/discover - Discovery features

Database Schema

For MongoDB, I’ve designed these main collections:

// Users collection
{
  _id: ObjectId,
  username: String,
  email: String,
  displayName: String,
  bio: String,
  profileImage: String,
  createdAt: Date,
  stats: {
    talkCount: Number,
    followersCount: Number,
    followingCount: Number
  }
}

// Talks collection
{
  _id: ObjectId,
  userId: ObjectId,
  audioUrl: String,
  duration: Number,
  transcription: String,
  tags: [String],
  createdAt: Date,
  stats: {
    plays: Number,
    likes: Number,
    shares: Number,
    comments: Number
  }
}

Audio Processing Pipeline

One of the most critical components is the audio processing pipeline:

1. Upload - User records audio in the app
2. Processing - Server normalizes volume, removes noise, optimizes for streaming
3. Transcription - Speech-to-text for searchability and accessibility
4. Storage - Processed audio stored in AWS S3
5. Delivery - CDN distribution for fast global access

In the next post, I’ll cover the mobile app development with React Native and how it integrates with this backend.