AlbMej/Online-Loan-Application

A Dockerized Django App to submit Loan Applications.

Online-Loan-Application

Setup

Make sure to have Python3, virtualenv, and PostgreSQL already pre-installed.

1. Create a virtual environment by running the command virtualenv env --python=python3.7
2. Activate the virtual environment by running . env/bin/activate
3. Run the following command sudo apt-get install libpq-dev
4. Install the dependencies via pip3 install -r requirements.txt

Create Database and User

We will be using PostgreSQL for our database. Go into the psql terminal (I access it through psql -U postgres -h localhost postgres) Run the following commands:

postgres=# CREATE USER sample_user WITH PASSWORD 'password';
CREATE ROLE
postgres=# CREATE DATABASE sample_database WITH OWNER sample_user;
CREATE DATABASE

In addition to that, to be able to run the test suite, we will also have to do the following:

postgres=# ALTER USER loaner CREATEDB;
ALTER ROLE

Then, in the settings folder, create a secrets.py file in which you will place your secret key and databse credentials. They should be in the following form:

SECRET_KEY = 'sOmE_rAnDoM_50_cHaRaCtEr_StRiNg'

DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.postgresql_psycopg2',
        'NAME': '[DB_NAME]',
        'USER': '[DB_USER]',
        'PASSWORD': '[USER_PASSWORD]',
        'HOST': 'localhost',
        'PORT': 5432 # default postgres port
    }
}

Deploying the application

1. Create the migrations python3 manage.py makemigrations
2. Run the migrations python3 manage.py migrate
3. Navigate to loan_app and run python3 manage.py runserver
4. To deactivate the virtual environment, run the following deactivate

Dockerizing application

I am currently using Window's WSL Ubuntu version Ubuntu 18.04, so I followed this tutorial: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/setting-up-docker-for-windows-and-wsl-to-work-flawlessly

Make sure to download Docker Desktop. I am using Powershell to run these commands as my WSL did not work (Windows, Docker, WSL, so many headaches...)

The Dockerfile and docker-compose.yml includes the necessary to dockerize this application. Make sure to remove any environment folders before dockerizing the application (e.g. /env/) To use the database within the container, you must change the DATABASES variable to:

DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.postgresql_psycopg2',
        'NAME': 'postgres',
        'USER': 'postgres',
        'HOST': 'db',
        'PORT': 5432,
    }
}

Now, in Powershell, run docker-compose up --build and wait as it builds the container. When the log shows "database system is ready to accept connections", open up a new Powershell window in the root of the project directory.

Run the following commands:

docker-compose run --rm web python loan_app/manage.py makemigrations --settings=loan_app.settings.settings
docker-compose run --rm web python loan_app/manage.py migrate --settings=loan_app.settings.settings
docker-compose run --rm -p 8000:8000 web python loan_app/manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:8000

Viola! The project is now running through a container :) Access it through http://127.0.0.1:8000/

Set up project on a Heroku server

Make sure to have the Heroku CLI pre installed. In my Ubuntu 18.04 terminal, I used curl https://cli-assets.heroku.com/install-ubuntu.sh | sh

heroku config:set DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=loan_app.settings.heroku --app albmej-loan-application heroku addons:create heroku-postgresql:hobby-dev

1. Login to Heroku: heroku login

2. Install the Heroku container registry plugin for the CLI: heroku plugins:install @heroku-cli/plugin-container-registry

3. Login to the registry: heroku container:login

4. Create a Heroku app:

   You can do by just running heroku create and it will randomly generate an app name for you

   Or you can do something like heroku create albmej-loan-application

5. Then, push your image: heroku container:push web --app albmej-loan-application

Unfortunately steps 6 and 7 do not work with my Windows setup. Running through a lot of headaches trying to get it to work.

6. At this point the next step would be to release the image: heroku container:release web --app albmej-loan-application
7. Then heroku open --app albmej-loan-application to check out the live app

heroku ps:scale web=1 --app albmej-loan-application heroku config:set DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=settings.heroku --app albmej-loan-application

TODO:

• Implement SMTP Email Backend (Not required but a good addition)
• Find out why email backend console doesn't work
• Add to a server (Heroku)