Samwoostore (internally Samwoohub) replaces ad-hoc order taking with one owned storefront + operations console for Samwoo, an industrial-supplies seller. It models six customer segments and non-piece units of sale, serves media from Google Cloud Storage with long-lived caching, audits every API action via Winston, and ships every push through a Dockerised GitHub Actions pipeline (GHCR image → SSH to a self-managed Nginx VPS, health-verified) — built and operated end to end by one developer.
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Samwoostore - E-Commerce Platform
Solo Full-Stack Developer — Client (Samwoo)
A production-grade Next.js 15 e-commerce platform for Samwoo with a role-based admin dashboard, Google Cloud Storage-backed media, and a Dockerised CI/CD pipeline that ships every push to a self-managed Nginx VPS.
Role & Context
Solo full-stack developer for the client Samwoo (org Darts-Ecommerce) — owned product scoping, schema, frontend, API, auth, storage, observability, Docker packaging, GitHub Actions CI/CD, and the VPS deployment (plan → design → develop → containerise → deploy → operate). Models six customer segments (end user, wholesaler, reseller, installer, projects, company). Live at samwoohub.lk.
Problem
Samwoo needed a single owned storefront + ops console to replace ad-hoc order taking: a catalogue large enough to need search, filtering, pagination and stock states; multiple customer segments (end users, wholesalers, resellers, installers, project buyers, companies) that a generic Shopify-style template doesn't model; non-piece units of sale (pieces, meter, box, drum) for industrial SKUs; and a repeatable deploy story so the owner could push changes without manual SSH steps.
Approach & Architecture
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Best Practices Followed
- Feature-modular architecture: src/features/<domain>/{api,components,hooks,services,validators,types} keeps domains self-contained
- Role-based access control at the edge: middleware checks the NextAuth JWT role before the route renders, not after
- Schema-validated boundaries: Zod on every API input and React Hook Form on every UI form, with shared type inference
- Indexed for the queries actually used: a dedicated migration adds indexes on Product status/slug/category/subcategory to avoid sequential scans
- Immutable, cacheable media: GCS objects served with Cache-Control max-age=31536000 and next/image AVIF/WebP across responsive widths
- Deploy with verification, not hope: the deploy workflow polls /api/health 15x before reporting success and Slack-notifies on both paths
Challenges & Resolution
ChallengeModelling industrial SKUs that ship in non-piece units (meter, box, drum) without forking storefront templates that assume integer quantities.
FixAdded a ProductUnit enum (PIECES | METER | BOX | DRUM) via a dedicated migration and threaded it through product display, cart line items, and the jsPDF receipt — so the unit travels with the price instead of being inferred from the product name.
ChallengeFirst-pass schema used string IDs, making joins, indexing and admin-side filtering slower than acceptable as the catalogue grew.
FixMigrated primary keys to Int, then added performance indexes on the catalogue's hot paths (status, slug, category, subcategory) and composite uniques (userId, productId) on Cart/Wishlist for idempotent add-to-cart.
ChallengeSelf-hosted VPS deploys intermittently failed because GHCR image pulls timed out before the container was healthy, with no visibility into which step failed.
FixHardened the deploy workflow with a 5x retry on docker compose pull, a 15-attempt x 5s health-poll against /api/health, and a Slack notification on both success and failure — so a bad deploy fails loudly instead of leaving stale containers running.
Outcomes
- Shipped a single-codebase storefront + admin + API + observability + CI/CD pipeline solo
- Image pipeline: next/image + GCS with 1-year immutable caching (max-age=31536000) and responsive widths up to 3840px, AVIF/WebP automatic
- Deployment automation: push to main/develop -> image built/tagged (branch + SHA + latest) -> GHCR -> SSH-deployed to VPS -> health-verified (15x poll) -> Slack-notified, with zero manual SSH steps
- Schema maturity: 5 production migrations including a performance-index pass and a hot-path ID type conversion; RBAC of 3 roles x 6 customer segments enforced in middleware
- Hardened auth (bcrypt, 30-day JWT, single-use 32-byte 1-hour reset tokens) and 4 Winston log streams (app/audit/performance/error) with rotation
Tech Stack
Next.jsReactTypeScriptRedux ToolkitRTK QueryPrismaPostgreSQLNextAuth.jsGoogle Cloud StorageResendWinstonDockerGitHub ActionsGHCRNginx
Concepts & Skills Learnt
Next.js 15 App Router (Server/Client Component split)Standalone Next.js output for minimal Docker imagesPrisma schema design + performance-index migrations on PostgreSQLNextAuth.js JWT sessions with RBACRedux Toolkit + RTK Query cache invalidationZod schema validation at API boundariesGoogle Cloud Storage with long-lived CDN-style cachingMulti-stage Docker builds for production Node imagesGitHub Actions CI/CD with GHCRSSH rollout with health-poll verificationNginx reverse proxy + Let's Encrypt TLSStructured logging & audit trails with Winston (rotation)bcrypt hashing + one-time cryptographic reset tokensFeature-modular frontend architecture (vertical slicing)