What is k8s-polling-platform?

k8s-polling-platform is a cloud native web application where users vote for their favourite programming language through a browser interface. The main purpose is educational: it demonstrates how to deploy a full stack application on Kubernetes (a system for running containerized software at scale) hosted on AWS EKS, Amazon's managed Kubernetes service. The application has three layers. A React frontend handles the browser UI. A Go (Golang) backend processes votes via a REST API. MongoDB stores vote data as a replica set, meaning multiple database nodes keeping copies in sync for reliability. The flow is straightforward: a user opens the frontend, the React app sends a request to the Go API, the API reads or writes to MongoDB, and the updated results are sent back to the browser. All three components are containerized with Docker and deployed as Kubernetes workloads. MongoDB runs as a StatefulSet, a Kubernetes resource type designed for databases that need stable network identities and persistent storage. The frontend and API run as standard Deployments, both exposed via Kubernetes LoadBalancer services. The setup also uses liveness and readiness probes, health checks that let Kubernetes restart unhealthy containers and stop routing traffic to pods not ready to serve requests. The repository contains numbered Kubernetes manifest YAML files covering the namespace, secrets, database, API, and frontend, plus a complete deployment guide for provisioning an EKS cluster with the eksctl command line tool, verification steps, and a troubleshooting section. The README frames the project explicitly as a learning resource for Kubernetes fundamentals, StatefulSets, MongoDB replica sets, and AWS EKS deployment, built by a solo developer as a portfolio project demonstrating full stack, cloud native skills.