Ishant Chauhan needed a custom storage app for his personal files, sparking curiosity about how file handling works on the cloud. His research taught him the details of file selection, permissions, metadata, backend servers, APIs, and encryption. It all laid the groundwork for an award-winning app in Hashnode’s “Build with Linode” hackathon.
Ishant learned about the hackathon on Hashnode’s Discord server and asked his friend, Vaibhav Jaiswal, if he wanted to join him in the month-long competition. Vaibhav had participated in previous Hashnode hackathons and was eager to help.
The development duo named the cloud-based file-storing app DocuBox and got to work developing a list of features and planning the UI. Vaibhav is an Android developer who has done multiple production-level projects using the Android SDK and Kotlin. Ishant has Android experience and is exploring the MERN stack (MongoDB, Expressjs, Reactjs, Nodejs) and other JavaScript frameworks like Socket.io and NextJS.
Users of DocuBox can upload, preview, download, and share all kinds of images, videos, and other documents just like they can on Google Drive, but it’s open source, free, and links to private storage solutions. Ishant and Vaibhav understood the concern users would have about the security of their personal data, so DocuBox encrypts all data into a non-readable binary blob that keeps data secure even if a breach occurs.
Vaibhav did most of the Android development, and Ishant handled the backend. After many code reviews, bug fixations, and UI changes, DocuBox got submitted as a hackathon entrant.
Vaibhav and Ishant report that working with Linode was simple, making the development of DocuBox smooth and easy. Comprehensive Linode documentation and a helpful support community made setting up a dedicated VPS and deploying the app a success.
While there are no plans for the future of DocuBox, the experience gave them more confidence and sparked many new ideas. In the meantime, Ishant is diving into learning various languages and frameworks, and Vaibhav is working towards becoming a software engineer and plans to become a Google Developer Expert.
