wall-app-backend

wall-app-backend is a backend REST API utilizing Django and Django Rest Framework. It's a socialmedia app where users can make posts in a wall.

Here is the link for the FrontEnd part of the application

Techs implemented: Django, Django Rest Framework, SendGrid, PyJWTs, python-dotenv

For tests I used Django's own test functionalities and the package "coverage", that tests and also generate reports of test coverage for the project.

Here are some of the business rules for this API:

1 - Users must be authenticated. On user registration they receive and confirmation e-mail.

2 - Users and Guests are able to see all posts.

3 - Users can only delete or edit their own posts.

Installing required Packages:

It is recommended to install the required packages for the project in a virtual enviroment. This is the command to create the virtual enviroment:

python3 -m venv .venv

To activate it just run:

source .venv/bin/activate

To install the required packages run:

pip install -r requirements.txt

Then you should be good!

Project Structure:

accounts: App that manages user interations, there is a custom User and a custom UserManager class implemented because I wanted email to be the login field. Here you will find the classes that operate the CRUD for User, at the moment it is only possible to create and list users, but not edit or delete them.

postwall: App that manages the wall posting, all the rules and classes necessary to create, edit, delete or read posts.

wallapp: Main project folder, most important file here is the settings that was altered in a lot of ways to use enviromental variables with dotenv, and the email settings necessary to send an email on user sucessful registration.

Enviromental Variables:

There are some env. variables that I needed to set, their names and functionalities are as follows:

SECRET : This one is to hide the django key that is in settings.py in a env variable so its not exposed.

EMAIL_HOST_USER: For the email sending the confirmation e-mails.

EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD: It is required to provide a password to be able to sent e-mails.

SENDGRID_API_KEY: It is a generated unique key so you can use Sendgrid to sent emails.

DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL: When no e-mail for sender is provided it takes this one as the sender email.

Tests:

I used coverage package to run tests and generate reports, the configuration for coverage is in the covergarerc file. You can run:

python3 manage.py test

Or if you and a report and see the test coverage for the app you run:

coverage run manage.py test && coverage report && coverage html

The HTML file that this report generates is really useful.

Final Observations:

It is not a finished project yet. I learned a lot while making it but its not optmized. I intend to change it a little more and make it better before I can call it finished. I wrote this readme in the intent that one can use this project as a basis to understand Django and Django Rest Framework and how powerful they can be. There are a lot of good references in the web, and the documentation for Django and Django Rest Framework it is really good and it was essential for me to be able to do this project.