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This is the backend section of the shared-world application built using Djano, with React as frontend. The project is deployed on Google App Engine Flexible Environment with access to Google Cloud Storage and Cloud SQL.

This is the most complicated project I have built using Django, and so this part of the project was used with the assistance of Youtube tutorials

Setup

These are the steps I went through to start this project.

Getting Started

• Install python
• Go to “Windows Powershell”
• Check python, pip and django-admin versions

  python –version
  pip –version
  django-admin –version
  

• Allow execution of scripts

  Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned
  

• Go to project directory and make directory for backend

  cd shared.world
  mkdir backend
  

• Install and create virtual environment and activate

  pip install virtualenv
  cd backend
  virtualenv env
  ./env/Scripts/activate
  

• Install django

  pip install django
  

• Create django project and check inside directory

  django-admin startproject shared_world
  cd shared_world
  dir
  

• Check server runs

  python manage.py runserver
  

• Check server running at given address http://127.0.0.1:8000/
• Go to visualstudio and see the new folders
• Change shared_world folder to ‘src’

Django REST Framework

• Install djangorestframework

  pip install djangorestframework
  

• Add to INSTALLED_APPS in shared_world – settings.py
• Add REST_FRAMEWORK in shared_world – settings.py

  REST_FRAMEWORK = {'DEFAULT_PERMISSION_CLASSES': ['rest_framework.permissions.DjangoModelPermissionsOrAnonReadOnly'] }
  

• Add url path to shared_world – urls.py

Corsheaders

• Install cors headers

  pip install django-cors-headers
  

• Add to INSTALLED_APPS in shared_world – settings.py
• Add ‘Corsheaders’ to middleware at top

  MIDDLEWARE = ['corsheaders.middleware.CorsMiddleware']
  

• Allow cors by adding add at bottom

  CORS_ORIGIN_ALLOW-ALL = True
  

Media

• Install pillow to handle media files

  pip install pillow
  

• Add to shared_world - settings.py

  MEDIA_ROOT=os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'media')
  MEDIA_URL = '/media/' 
  

• Add static to urlpatterns ```
• static(settings.MEDIA_URL, document_root=settings.MEDIA_ROOT) ```

Apps

• Start app (under src)

  python manage.py startapp app_name
  

• Add ‘app_name’ to INSTALLED_APPS
• Create ‘app_name’ in models.py
• Register in admin.py
• Create api folder under ‘app_name’
• Create init.py file
• Create serializers.py file
• Create views.py file
• Create urls.py

Django Root

• Add ‘include’ to import
• add url paths to ‘urlpatterns’ for each app at shared_world - urls.py
• add each app to INSTALLED_APPS in shared_world – settings.py
• change to root project directory in shared_world – settings.py

  ROOT_URLCONF = 'shared_world.urls'
  WSGI_APPLICATION = 'shared_world.wsgi.application'
  

Post

• author is ForeignKey relating to a profile_id
• country is ForeignKey relating to a country_name
• post_id is pk
• ListView of all psots
• ListView of posts by a single author
• ListView of posts for a country
• DetailView of post
• Serializer for fields of post
• Serializer for fields of post plus all informaiton for country and post

Profile

• extends the Django User model
• one-to-one with user
• when user is created so is a profile
• the profile_id is the pk
• ListView of all profile
• DetailView of single profile

Country

• uses choice fields to predefine the country names
• name is pk
• ListView of all countries
• DetailView of Country

Interests (taggit)

• Install taggit and taggit-serializer

  pip install django-taggit
  pip install django-taggit-serializer
  

• add to INSTALLED_APPS in shared_world - settings.py
• Add to models (profile and post) – import and add taggable manager in model

  from taggit.managers import TaggableManager
  

• Add to serializer – import and add

  from taggit_serializer.serializers import (TagListSerializerField, TaggitSerializer)
  

• Add to shared_world - settings.py

  TAGGIT_CASE_INSENSITIVE = True
  

• many-to-many relationship
• no restriction (max. was not able to be implemented successfully)