Running in production 2020 · 2026
Rede de Mentores
A platform that connects mentors and students, from a 2020 university project, rebuilt on PostgreSQL and AWS Lambda with Terraform, direct-to-S3 uploads and asynchronous image resizing.
The product
Mentors sign up, list their areas and publish mentorships with available days and times. An administrator approves each one before it becomes visible. Students browse by area and book a slot, in person or online.
It was built at AGES in the
first semester of 2020. The original is preserved under the v1 tag; what follows is the rebuild.
What changed
- Firestore → PostgreSQL on Neon. The data layer became repositories, and the API responses the frontend depends on stayed exactly the same.
- Heroku → AWS, provisioned with Terraform. CloudFront serves the frontend from S3 and the API from Lambda; secrets live in SSM Parameter Store.
- Claim-check image uploads. Images no longer pass through the API. The browser asks for a ticket, uploads straight to S3, and the API only receives the reference. A separate Lambda resizes the image asynchronously.
- Security fixes. The API no longer returns password hashes, users can no longer promote themselves to administrator, and editing a profile no longer wipes the password.
- Ready to try. A seed populates areas, mentors, mentees and mentorships, so the deployed app isn’t empty.