Mid-Core / System Completed

Note Sharing System

Academic Collaboration Platform

01 — Project Overview

A peer note-sharing platform for college students, with subject filtering, file upload/download, and user accounts.

Solo Developer.

Stack

PHPMySQLHTML5CSS3JavaScript

Private / Offline

Goal

Give students a centralized hub to share and discover study notes organized by subject.

User Issue

Notes were shared via WhatsApp groups — disorganized, unsearchable, and ephemeral.

File Management

Stored files in a server directory with MySQL metadata records for searchability and access control.

Subject Taxonomy

Built a subject/category tagging system so students could browse by course or semester.

Key Challenge

Preventing users from accessing other users' private/draft notes by guessing file URLs.

snippet

// Auth-gated file download
if ($_SESSION['user_id'] !== $file['owner_id'] && $file['is_private']) {
  die('Unauthorized'); 
}

A clean, functional note-sharing portal with file upload, subject filtering, and access-controlled downloads.

Impact

Solved the disorganized WhatsApp note-sharing problem with a searchable, access-controlled web platform.

Learnings

Understood the nuances of server-side file access control beyond just route protection.

What I'd do differently

Would add a full-text search index (FULLTEXT MySQL index) for searching within note content.