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System Overview

Project Abstract​

Patreon Shout is a web application that allows content creators to have their Patreon posts automatically sent to other social platforms. This feature makes posting new content simple and effective. Patreon Shout also caters to users who are not content creators, which we refer to as Patrons. With our main feed, Patrons are able to see and interact with the posts of the Patreon creators they follow with tools to sort and filter their feed the way they like. These features work in tandem to provide a way to improve creator outreach and user interaction.

Conceptual Design​

Patreon Shout will consist of a frontend web application and a Java-based backend. The frontend will be made using the React Javascript library while the backend will be split into three different applications/services, each with their own unique purpose(s).

The first application will be a MySQL database that will hold all of the profile information, Patreon post data, and any creator tokens that need to be saved.

The second part will be the backend that services the web application for both the creators and users. For creators, it will acquire their campaign’s posts by making HTTP GET requests through the Patreon API with a supplied creator token. These acquired posts will then be saved into the MySQL database, and immediately published to other social platforms. For the patrons (the non-creator users), their desired Patreon creators (e.g., creators they currently have a pledge towards, or creators they’ve manually added through the web interface) posts will be sent to the Patreon Shout web application. Handling anything that all non-creator users will directly interface with, such as filtering and searching posts.

When a Patreon creator page is loaded, it will read all creator posts and save all post data that has not yet been added to the MySQL database. When it comes to the application backend, it will be developed in Java. This gives the benefits of having the application be platform and architecture agnostic. It will utilize the Spring Boot framework. This will allow the application to take the shape of a RESTful API, have useful features when talking to the MySQL database, and to assist in dependency injection. Spring Boot uses an approach that gives control of dependency injection to itself which allows for loose coupling and management of components.

Background​

This software application will utilize several frameworks and APIs:

The application will utilize the frameworks listed to give the creators and patrons a thought out and easy to use web interface that will require minimal clicks to complete a desired task.

The inspiration for this project came from a previous project in CIS 3296 - Software Design. This previous project was known as Patreon Discord Announcer, or PDA. This was a Discord bot that allowed users to invite the bot to their server and have it post live Patreon updates from their favorite creators. The Github page for this project can be found here. Patreon Shout pulls some key ideas from PDA like allowing users to see live post updates. However, we decided the Discord bot idea wouldn’t have mass appeal. Our target audience being someone who used both Discord and Patreon and needing our service.

The patron side of our application will be inspired by Twitter’s feed/timeline. A timeline is a list of updates from users you are following that can consist of search results or lists that a user has curated. This idea of a timeline is what we want for Patreon Shout. This allows us to create a central place for users to see all their followed content creators, and recommend new creators based on what they like. We believe this will help Patreon grow as a platform.

There are a lot of examples of sites that use React, which is our choice for the frontend of our application. Some of these include Instagram, AirBnb, and Facebook. These sites use React because it is lightweight, developer friendly, and intuitive.

The reason we chose Spring Boot is because it allows us to easily manage connections to our frontend and database. Spring Boot also allows us to easily create RESTful API endpoints. An example of a successful web application built with Spring Boot would be Udemy.

An interesting project that shows why Patreon is a good candidate for a web application like this would be Graphtreon. This shows how Patreon’s popularity is growing and the creator side of our application could catalyze this growth.