Developer: Aleksander Kisielewicz

View live api here 💻

TravelShutter API was developed as a part of Portfolio Project #5 (advanced front-end) for Diploma in Full Stack Software Development at Code Institute.

Project purpose was to build a back-end application that provides data and full CRUD (create, read, update, delete) functionality to React front-end application.

• Deployed front-end: travel-shutter.herokuapp.com
• Front-end repo: github

• Project
  • Agile Methodology for project planning
• Logic and features
  • Database model and database structure
• Technology
  • Python libraries/modules
• Testing
  • Manual testing
• Bugs/known issues
• Deployment
  • Database
  • Cloudinary
  • Django secret key
  • Github and Gitpod
  • Heroku
• Possible future development
• Credits
  • Code

Project's Kanban board @GitHub Projects

Project's Table view @GitHub Projects

To keep track of progress, I used a kanban board divided into following sections: "to do", "in progress" "done" and "future enhancements" that allowed to visualize all tasks and prioritize next steps.

By using agile methodology, I was able to stay organized and focused on delivering the most important features, while also allowing flexibility for future development.

Project uses cloud-based PostgreSQL database provided by ElephantSQL as a service. ElephantSQL is known for its ease of use, reliability, and is a popular choice for Django projects that requires PostgreSQL database. It offers web interface with console for SQL queries. Database URL including API key is stored as environmental variable in heroku.

To generate model diagrams I used django-extensions with python library pygraphviz. They show relationship between models.

All django apps:

Model profiles

Model posts

Model comments

Model likes

Model followers

• Python - high-level, imperative, general-purpose programming language.
• Markdown - markup language used to write README and TESTING documents.

• Cloudinary - cloude-based image and video API
• Django - python-based web framework with MTV architectural pattern
• Django Rest Framework - powerful and flexible toolkit for building Web APIs.
• ElephantSQL - PostgreSQL database as a service
• Git - Git was used for version control by utilizing the Gitpod terminal to commit to Git and Push to GitHub
• GitHub - GitHub is used to store the project's code after being pushed from Git
• Heroku - online app used to deploy project

• os - built-in Pythod module - used to save and import env variables
• cloudinary - cloud hosting used to store pictures
• dj3-cloudinary-storage - provides django integration with Cloudinary service
• dj-database-url - utility that allows configure environment variable to a connection string that includes the database engine
• django-allauth - integrated django accounts management
• django-cors-headers - handles the server headers required for cross-origin resource sharing (CORS)
• Django Filters - reusable Django application allowing users to declaratively add dynamic QuerySet filtering from URL parameters
• gunicorn - Python WSGI HTTP Server for UNIX
• oauthlib - framework for implementing open standard for authorization
• psycopg2 - PostgresSQL database adapter for Python language
• PyJWT - Python library for encoding, decoding and veryfying JSON Web Tokens
• pytz - library that provides support for working with time zones, converts the dates between zones
• requests-oauthlib - OAuth library suppor for python requests
• sqlparse - non-validating SQL parser for Python. It provides support for parsing, splitting and formatting SQL statements.
• pygraphviz - used to generate visualization of database model
• PyJWT - JSON Web Token implementation in Python
• Pillow - Pillow adds image processing capabilities to Python interpreter

• Issue: #24 Post serializer issue with profile_image field

An issue was found in PostSerializer class in posts/serializers.py. The read-only field profile_image for the PostSerializer class contains the wrong value "profile.profile.image.url". This didn't allow the serializer to access the URL of the profile image belonging to the owner of the post and display the image as intended.

Bug was fixed by changing profile_image field to serializers.ReadOnlyField(source="owner.profile.image.url").

Details of manual testing can be found in TESTING.md file.

App was deployed to heroku for the first time when django installation was completed to make sure that everything is working correctly.

1. Navitate to ElephantSQL website, log in to your account
2. In top-right corner click on green button "Create New Instance".
3. Enter database name, leave plan field as is, optionaly enter tags.
4. Select region, click on "Review" and then on "Create instance".
5. Go to your dashboard, find newly created database instance, click on it.
6. Copy URL starting with "postgress://"
7. Paste this URL into env.py file as DATABASE_URL value and save the file.

os.environ["DATABASE_URL"] = "postgres://yourLinkFromDatabaseDashboard"

1. Navigate to https://cloudinary.com/ and log in to your account.
2. Navigate to dashboard/console https://console.cloudinary.com/console/ and copy your API link starting with "cloudinary://".
3. Paste copied url into env.py file as CLOUDINARY_URL value and save the file.

os.environ["CLOUDINARY_URL"] = "cloudinary://yourLinkFromCloudinaryDashboard"

In order to protect django app secret key it was set as anviroment variable and stored in env.py. Please change your password accordingly.

os.environ["SECRET_KEY"] = "yourSecretKey"

Note: Repository was created using Code Institute template: https://github.com/Code-Institute-Org/ci-full-template

1. Login to Github and navigate to repository: https://github.com/alexkisielewicz/drf-travelshutter

2. Click on "Fork button" in upper-right corner and create a new form in your own account.

3. Open your repository in local IDE or using Gitpod. Preferred way is to used Chrome Gitpod Extension. When you install extension, green "Gitpod" button appears in your repository. Click on it to cread new workspace.

4. Go to workspace terminal and install all requirements using command: "pip install -r requirements.txt". All te packages will be installed. requirements.txt content:

   asgiref==3.7.2
   cloudinary==1.33.0
   dj-database-url==0.5.0
   dj-rest-auth==2.1.9
   Django==3.2.19
   django-allauth==0.44.0
   django-cloudinary-storage==0.3.0
   django-cors-headers==4.0.0
   django-filter==23.2
   djangorestframework==3.14.0
   djangorestframework-simplejwt==5.2.2
   gunicorn==20.1.0
   oauthlib==3.2.2
   Pillow==9.5.0
   psycopg2==2.9.6
   PyJWT==2.7.0
   python3-openid==3.2.0
   pytz==2023.3
   requests-oauthlib==1.3.1
   sqlparse==0.4.4

5. Local env.py file should be configured as on example below:

   import os
   
   # Env vars
   os.environ["DEV"] = 1
   os.environ["DATABASE_URL"] = "postgres://yourLinkCopiedFromElephantSQLDashboard"
   os.environ["SECRET_KEY"] = "YourSecretKey"
   os.environ["CLOUDINARY_URL"] = "cloudinary://yourLinkCopiedFromCloudinaryDashboard"

6. In order to save django changes in database migration needs to be made.

7. Use terminal commands:

   python3 manage.py makemigrations
   python3 manage.py migrate
   

8. Create superuser to access admin area using terminal command (email is optional, password won't be visible when typing, confirm password twice):

   python3 manage.py createsuperuser
   

9. App can be run in gitpod environment using terminal command:

   python3 manage.py runserver
   

10. Go to Heroku and follow further instructions below.

1. Navigate to https://heroku.com/ login to your account and open dashboard. Click button "New" and select "Create new app" button.

2. Enter app name, I used "drf-travelshutter", chose your region and click on "Create app" button.

3. Click on newly created app and go to "Deploy" tab and then to "Deployment method" section. Authorize and connect your GitHub account, then find and select your repository.

4. Go to the "Settings" tab, click on "Reveal Config Vars" and add the following keys and values (all values should be strings without any quotation marks):

   Key	Value
   CLOUDINARY_URL	cloudinary url beginning with cloudinary://
   DATABASE_URL	postgress url beginning with postgress://
   DISABLE_COLLECTSTATIC	1
   SECRET_KEY	YourSecretKey, the same as in env.py
   ALLOWED_HOST	yourappname.herokuapp.com

5. Procfile required to run project on Heroku was already created but if you change your app's name please make sure that this change is reflected in Procfile. It can be found in your project's main directory. In my case Procfile looks as below:

   release: python manage.py makemigrations && python manage.py migrate
   web: gunicorn drf_travelshutter.wsgi

6. After adding environmental variables and editing Procfile project is ready for deployment. In Heroku app's dashboard navigate to "Deploy" tab, scroll down to "Manual deploy" section. Select main branch from dropdown menu and click on "Deploy Branch".

7. After built is done, you should be able to see the button with the link leading to deployed app. In my case http://drf-travelshutter.herokuapp.com.

If I had more time or decide to develop app further I would add/improve following functionalities that I moved to olumn on project board:

• #22 As a user I want to be able to add tags to my posts and be able to display tagged posts so I can easily find the content that I'm interested in.

This project was built based on the Code Institute walkthrough project - Django Rest Framework for front-end Moments app.

• Code Institute course and learning platform
• The book "Python Crash Course, 2nd Edition: A Hands-On, Project-Based Introduction To Programming"
• StackOverflow
• Django - Django documentation.
• DjangoRestFramework - DRF documentation.

• My Mentor Jubril Akolade for helpful feedback and guidance at all stages of the project.
• Code Institute Slack Community for being invaluable knowledge base.