Chirpy

A small Twitter-like HTTP API written in Go. Users can register, log in, post short messages ("chirps"), and read or filter chirps from other users. Built as a learning project working through the Boot.dev backend course.

Features

• User registration and login with hashed passwords (argon2id)
• JWT access tokens + database-backed refresh tokens with revocation
• Authenticated chirp creation, deletion (only by the author), and update of own account
• Filtering chirps by author and sorting by date
• "Chirpy Red" premium membership upgraded via incoming Polka webhooks (API-key authenticated)
• Admin endpoints (metrics page, dev-only data reset) gated by PLATFORM=dev

Why it exists

It's a complete backend in idiomatic Go's standard library - no web framework. Useful as a reference for:

• HTTP routing with Go 1.22+ method-prefixed ServeMux patterns (e.g. GET /api/chirps/{chirpID})
• JWT issue / verify / refresh / revoke flows
• sqlc + goose for type-safe SQL and versioned migrations
• Webhook authentication via API keys

Tech stack

• Go (standard net/http)
• PostgreSQL with lib/pq
• goose for migrations, sqlc for query code generation
• golang-jwt/jwt v5 for JWTs, argon2id for password hashing

Setup

Prerequisites

• Go 1.22+
• PostgreSQL running locally
• goose — go install github.com/pressly/goose/v3/cmd/goose@latest
• sqlc (only needed if you change SQL files)

1. Create the database

psql postgres -c "CREATE DATABASE chirpy;"

2. Configure environment

Create a .env file in the project root:

DB_URL="postgres://postgres:postgres@localhost:5432/chirpy?sslmode=disable"
PLATFORM="dev"
JWT_SECRET="<output of: openssl rand -base64 64>"
POLKA_KEY="<your polka api key>"

3. Apply migrations

goose -dir sql/schema postgres "$DB_URL" up

4. Run

go run .

Server listens on :8080.

Quick try

# Register
curl -X POST http://localhost:8080/api/users \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"email":"you@example.com","password":"password123"}'

# Log in (returns access + refresh tokens)
curl -X POST http://localhost:8080/api/login \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"email":"you@example.com","password":"password123"}'

# Post a chirp
curl -X POST http://localhost:8080/api/chirps \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <access_token>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"body":"hello world"}'

# List all chirps
curl http://localhost:8080/api/chirps

# Filter and sort
curl "http://localhost:8080/api/chirps?author_id=<uuid>&sort=desc"