/gci-nasa-apod

Primary LanguagePython

Install the requirements and packages The python based packages can be downloaded using python3 -m pip install -r requirements.txt But for the conversion of HTML to PDF documents, I've used weasyprint which requires a special installation process. Please use: https://weasyprint.readthedocs.io/en/latest/install.html to get weasy print set up and then run the python3 -m pip install -r requirements.txt command once again. You might have to add some commands to your bash profile and/or uninstall/install font-config as mentioned by online tutorials.

To make the main program (located in app.py) easier to understand, I've created 2 separate files for functions that are used by the

Run It Use python3 app.py to run the application, and headover to localhost:5000

Basic Concepts

  1. Form page which allows the user to input the date for which they want the APOD.
  2. A form handler which returns the correctly rendered html/pdf document OR redirect.

main program.

  • generalFunctions.py Used for:
    1. validating date
    2. get API key
    3. getting result from API
  • formHandlerFunctions.py Used for sending the right result to the front after basic validation has been done. Mainly deals with whether to send: A. webpage B. pdf file (with/without header and footer)
  1. Store static files (css + js) in the static folder
  2. HTML Templates in templates folder
  3. API Key for NASA APOD is stored in the 'key' file, that is read from using the getApiKey and then used in the program.

Quick Note

  1. About the length of App.py's handleForm function In app.py the handleForm function is >60 lines of code, which from what I know is not good design. I think about dividing the function into smaller more easily understandable/readable functions, but it would've led to bad design as well, since (to the best of m knowledge), I can't return something to the front end through a function called within the formHandler function, and even more so conditionally returning output didn't seem possible.

I've written this to tell you that it's not that I didn't try, but this might be the shortest possible.

  1. Choosing the PDF solution TL;DR The application works after a quite the headache.

I went kinda mad while trying to get this to work. FPDF hadn't been updated in the recent past & pyPDF had multiple versions and stuff.

I researched and asked on the Telegram group. Got some suggestions.

I was stubborn about making the PDF a non-front end solution because our task was making an API using Flask at the backend. Finally, I got an amazing response by Anmol Jhamb who mentioned weasyprint. Seemed liked the solution I wanted. But apparently setting it up was kind of a pain. Homebrew installed python again and what not. First time I ran it in the terminal it gave A LOT of warnings (still does), BUT it's working well with Python and Flask.

So long story short The application works after a quite the headache.

Exisiting Issues The UTF for the heart sybmol isn't working will making the PDF. And I'm too laxy to get it working XD.