In‑Depth Overview of the PassJava Open‑Source Interview Question System Architecture

Today I recommend an open‑source interview question system created by a friend, with the tutorial at www.passjava.cn . This article examines the system from an architectural design perspective and introduces the common microservice technologies it employs, offering valuable insights even if you are not directly interested in the project.

Original work, please like and share if it helps!

The system is a microservice project that incorporates mainstream technologies such as SpringBoot, Spring Cloud, MyBatis, Redis, MySQL, MongoDB, RabbitMQ, and Elasticsearch, and it is deployed using Docker containers.

Whether you want to learn distributed technologies, practice a real‑world project, or add a solid experience to your résumé, this project is an excellent fit.

Because the author provides detailed documentation, getting started is straightforward.

Technical Stack

The stack includes SpringBoot (core framework), Spring Cloud (microservices), MyBatis (ORM), Redis (caching), MySQL (relational DB), MongoDB (NoSQL), RabbitMQ (message queue), Elasticsearch (search engine), all containerized with Docker.

System Architecture Design

Below is an overview of the system’s architecture (source: PassJava official documentation).

Gateway

The gateway handles authentication, authorization, rate limiting, circuit breaking, degradation, request routing, and load balancing. This project uses Spring Cloud Gateway , the second‑generation gateway framework from Spring Cloud, intended to replace Netflix Zuul.

Service Registry and Configuration Center

Both functions are provided by Alibaba’s open‑source Nacos , part of Spring Cloud Alibaba, offering service discovery, configuration management, and distributed configuration capabilities similar to Consul or Eureka.

Nacos’s core features in this project are:

Service Registry : The API gateway obtains real‑time service routing addresses from the registry.

Configuration Center : Allows dynamic configuration without restarting services, with a user‑friendly UI for managing all service configurations.

Other options for configuration management include Apollo, Spring Cloud Config, and Kubernetes ConfigMap.

Distributed Tracing

In a distributed architecture, requests traverse multiple services, making troubleshooting difficult; a tracing system is needed.

This system uses Twitter’s Zipkin together with Spring Cloud Sleuth . Sleuth records tracing data, while Zipkin Server processes and visualizes it.

Related article: 40 Diagrams to Understand Distributed Tracing .

Monitoring System

Monitoring is handled by Prometheus + Grafana . Prometheus collects metrics, and Grafana visualizes them; Grafana’s data source is set directly to Prometheus.

For a deeper dive into monitoring choices, see Choosing Between Prometheus and Zabbix .

Message Queue

The system uses RabbitMQ for asynchronous processing, peak‑shaving, and reducing coupling. Other common queues such as Kafka and RocketMQ are mentioned.

Cache

Redis is used for caching, with high‑availability ensured via Redis Sentinel clusters.

Database

MySQL is employed with a master‑slave setup to achieve read‑write separation and improve read performance.

Object Storage

Files (e.g., images) are stored in Alibaba Cloud OSS, a distributed object storage service.

Rapid Development Scaffolding

The backend leverages the renren‑fast rapid‑development scaffold together with the renren‑generator code generator, enabling roughly 70% of the front‑ and back‑end code to be generated automatically.

Further reading on these scaffolds:

5 Free Java Project Scaffolds for Freelancers

Another 5 Java Rapid‑Development Scaffolds

Conclusion

This article analyzed the architecture of a friend’s open‑source microservice‑based interview question system, highlighting its purpose as a practical learning project for microservice concepts and a ready‑to‑use example for developers.

While a monolithic approach could handle the current load, the microservice design offers scalability for future growth.

Project repository: https://github.com/Jackson0714/PassJava-Platform

Documentation: http://jayh2018.gitee.io/passjava-learning/#/

Original work, please like and share if it helps!

References

[1] PassJava official documentation: http://jayh2018.gitee.io/passjava-learning/#/01.项目简介/2.项目微服务架构图

[2] Nacos official docs: https://nacos.io/zh-cn/docs/what-is-nacos.html

[3] renren‑fast scaffold: https://gitee.com/renrenio/renren-fast

[4] renren‑generator: https://gitee.com/renrenio/renren-generator

My WeChat still has a few friend slots; feel free to add me for occasional large‑company interview questions.