BookWorm
Case Study 2022

BookWorm.

BookWorm reimagines the digital reading experience by combining social discovery with editorial design principles.

Overview

BookWorm reimagines the digital reading experience by combining social discovery with editorial design principles. Built to help readers find their next favorite book through curated recommendations and community-driven reviews.

Tech Stack

  • TypeScript
  • Node.js
  • SurrealDB

Role

Fullstack Developer

Core Pillars

Smart Recommendations

Personalized book suggestions based on reading history and community preferences.

Reading Lists

Create and share curated book collections with custom categories.

Social Reviews

Community-driven reviews with rich text formatting and threaded discussions.

API-First Architecture

RESTful API built with Node.js and SurrealDB for flexible data querying.

Challenge 01

Graph-Based Recommendations

Traditional relational queries were too slow for generating recommendations across interconnected user preferences and book metadata.

The Solution

Leveraged SurrealDB's graph traversal capabilities to build a recommendation engine that queries relationships between users, books, and genres efficiently.

"Recommendation queries dropped from 800ms to under 50ms."
Challenge 02

Real-Time Sync

Keeping reading progress synchronized across devices while handling offline scenarios gracefully.

The Solution

Implemented an event-sourcing pattern with conflict resolution, allowing seamless sync when connectivity is restored.

"Zero data loss across 10k+ sync events in testing."

Ready to explore the code?

BookWorm is open-source and available for review. Dive into the architectural decisions that power this project.