🔐 Secure Document Vault API

A backend API that allows users to upload and manage sensitive documents securely.
This system stores documents using Cloudinary, ensuring scalability, redundancy, and reliability. It’s ideal for storing contracts, ID documents, and financial reports — especially when you need to avoid relying on traditional file-sharing services like Google Drive or Dropbox.

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🚀 Features

• ✅ Upload and store documents via Cloudinary
• ✅ View list of uploaded documents
• ✅ Retrieve document download links
• ✅ Organize user documents in a structured format
• ✅ Ready for encryption and link expiration features in future

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📦 Why Cloudinary?

While end-to-end encryption is not yet implemented, this system uses Cloudinary as a secure and robust storage backend. Cloudinary provides:

• 🔒 Secure access via signed URLs
• 🌍 Global CDN distribution
• ☁️ Auto-scaling, image optimization, and metadata support
• 📁 Redundant and reliable storage

Cloudinary ensures your uploaded files are not publicly exposed unless explicitly shared — making it a suitable temporary solution for sensitive file storage.

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🛠️ Tech Stack

• Node.js + Express.js
• Cloudinary (for secure file storage)
• TypeScript (optional, recommended)
• Multer (for file uploads)

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📄 API Endpoints

POST /document

Create a document.

• Request: multipart/form-data with a file
• Response: JSON containing the Cloudinary URL

GET /documents/all

Returns a list of uploaded documents (per user or global, depending on implementation).

GET /documents/:id

Fetch metadata or access link for a specific document.

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⚠️ Future Improvements

• 🔐 Add AES-256 encryption before upload
• ⏳ Generate expiring download links
• 🔓 Support one-time-access tokens
• 📅 Auto-delete expired or unused files

Database connection (e.g., PostgreSQL, MySQL, etc.)

DATABASE_URL=

Your server's base URL (used in email links, callbacks, etc.)

SERVER_URL=http://localhost:3000

Cloudinary configuration (used for uploading and storing documents)

CLOUD_NAME= API_KEY= API_SECRET=

Secret used to sign JWT tokens (should be long and secure)

JWT_SECRET=

Secret key for AES-256 encryption (must be 64 hex characters = 32 bytes)

ENCRYPTION_KEY=