Unishare
An open-source academic content sharing platform for university students — share notes, past papers, and resources with your department.
Designed to be self-hosted and configurable for any university.
Features
- Post & share — upload PDFs and academic files linked to a course and department
- Feed — browse posts filtered by department, course, and file type, with persistent filter state
- Reactions & comments — react to posts and leave threaded comments
- Notifications — real-time in-app notifications with unread badge
- Saved posts — bookmark posts to revisit later
- View counter — track how many times a post has been viewed
- User profiles — academic profile with department and year, profile image via OAuth avatar
- Auth — email/password sign-up (with confirm password) + OAuth (Google, Microsoft Entra ID)
- Admin moderation — approve or reject submitted posts
- Admin analytics — overview stats, top posts by views and reactions, most active users
- Department & course management — admin-managed departments and courses
Tech Stack
| Layer | Technology |
|---|
| Frontend | Next.js 16 (App Router), React 19, Tailwind CSS 4 |
| Backend | NestJS 11, Prisma, PostgreSQL |
| Auth | Better Auth (email + OAuth) |
| State | TanStack Query 5, Zustand |
| API contract | Orval (OpenAPI codegen) |
| Monorepo | Turborepo, pnpm workspaces |
Getting Started
Prerequisites
- Node.js 20+
- pnpm
- PostgreSQL database with the pgvector extension (or Neon for serverless, which supports it)
1. Install dependencies
pnpm install
2. Configure environment
Copy and fill in env files:
cp apps/api/.env.example apps/api/.env
cp apps/web/.env.example apps/web/.env
Key variables:
# apps/api/.env
DATABASE_URL=postgresql://...
BETTER_AUTH_SECRET=your-secret
# apps/web/.env
NEXT_PUBLIC_API_URL=http://localhost:3001
BETTER_AUTH_SECRET=your-secret
3. Generate clients
The Prisma client and the frontend API client are gitignored, so generate them after cloning:
pnpm --filter api db:generate
pnpm --filter web api:generate
4. Run database migrations & seed
cd apps/api
pnpm prisma migrate dev
pnpm prisma db seed
5. Start development servers
pnpm dev
- Frontend:
http://localhost:3000
- Backend:
http://localhost:3001
- API docs (Swagger):
http://localhost:3001/docs
Roadmap
See platform-phases.md for the full build plan.
| Phase | Description | Status |
|---|
| Phase 1 | Core loop — upload, browse, download | ✅ Done |
| Phase 2 | Discovery & engagement — reactions, comments, notifications, bookmarks | ✅ Done |
| Phase 3 | Search, tagging, trending feed, content reporting | Planned |
Self-Hosting
Unishare is built to be deployed by any university. Configure your identity provider and allowed email domain via environment variables — no code changes needed.
Supported auth providers:
- Email/password — restrict sign-up to a configured university email domain
- Google — Google Workspace OAuth
- Microsoft — Microsoft Entra ID (recommended for Microsoft 365 universities)
Contributing
Contributions are welcome. Please read CONTRIBUTING.md and open an issue before submitting a pull request.
License
MIT
