How I Built a Full-Stack News Aggregator with PHP and MySQL
A walkthrough of my News Aggregator project, pulling articles from NewsAPI, storing them in MySQL, and serving a clean feed with user accounts.
One of the projects I'm most proud of is my News Aggregator, a full-stack web application that fetches the latest technology news from NewsAPI, stores articles in a MySQL database, and presents them in a clean, browsable feed with user authentication.
Why I Built It
I wanted a single place to read tech news without jumping between dozens of websites. I also wanted to practice building a proper full-stack application with a real database, user accounts, and API integration.
Tech Stack
- Backend, PHP for server-side logic and API communication.
- Database, MySQL for storing fetched articles, user accounts, and preferences.
- Frontend, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for a responsive user interface.
- API, NewsAPI for pulling the latest articles in real time.
How It Works
1. Fetching Articles
A PHP script makes requests to the NewsAPI endpoint for technology articles. The response is parsed and each article's title, description, source, URL, and thumbnail are stored in the MySQL database:
$url = "https://newsapi.org/v2/top-headlines?category=technology&apiKey=" . $apiKey;
$response = file_get_contents($url);
$data = json_decode($response, true);
foreach ($data['articles'] as $article) {
// Insert into database, skip duplicates
$stmt = $pdo->prepare("INSERT IGNORE INTO articles ...");
$stmt->execute([...]);
}
2. User Authentication
Users can register and log in. Passwords are hashed with password_hash() and verified with password_verify(). Sessions keep users logged in across pages.
3. The Feed
The homepage pulls articles from the database sorted by date and renders them as cards. JavaScript handles lazy loading and smooth interactions without full page reloads.
Challenges Faced
- Rate limits, NewsAPI's free tier has a request cap. I implemented caching so articles are only fetched every 15 minutes.
- Duplicate prevention, Used
INSERT IGNOREand unique constraints on article URLs to avoid storing the same article twice. - Responsive design, Making the card layout look good on both desktop and mobile took several iterations.
What I Learned
This project taught me how to work with third-party APIs, design database schemas, handle user authentication securely, and build a responsive frontend. It was my first real full-stack project and gave me confidence to tackle bigger challenges.