Pythonista.io

Pythonista.io is a project that I started to help aggregate python related jobs(Not exclusive to web development) I based my idea on the simple observation that it was somewhat difficult to find a python job, and I feel like creating a central hub for both companies and developers would alleviate that frustration. Personally, I tackled this project because I wanted to gain a deeper knowledge of Flask. My goals were very specific:

Learn how to design a REST API in python (using the best practices)
Learn how to create and run unit tests (which I had never done before 😳)
Learn postgreSQL and sqlAlchemy (I only had experience with MongoDB, mySQL and SQLite)
Learn how to modularise a web project in python with the use of Flask Blueprints
Learn how to implement a 'Sign up with your email' functionality (including confirmation handling)
Learn how to use some of the more advanced features of python like decorators
Learn how to serve and deploy a flask / python app to a linux server and many more.

Overall it was a very rewarding experience because it also enabled me to discover the world of server administration and linux (both of which I really enjoy). It allowed me to play and experiment with tools like nginx, gunicorn, upstart (I learned about linux runlevels, vagrant, port forwarding, users/groups and file permissions, threading and all kinds of cool stuff). And I also got to solidify my knowledge of python's core feature (namely packages, modules and how they work under the hood)

The concept

The idea is extremely basic, nothing that will revolutionise job applications on the web. Companies can sign up for an account and publish jobs, which will be displayed in a nice looking interface where users will be able to filter them based on contract type.

There are 5 different contract types: Full Time, Part Time, Contract, Internship and Remote.

Users can then access job ads and apply using the email address provided by the companies.

It will take the form of a simple clickable link with a mailto attribute.

Some notes

This is a project that I devoted a lot of time to and I still am motivated to finish it. However I can't afford to work on it full time anymore so if any of you reading this wish to contribute and offer some help in the form of pull requests, you are more than welcome to do so.

I'm always keen on learning from more experienced developers and if you can teach a young passionate dev some cool tricks and techniques don't hold back ! 😄

Ideally, the only thing I ask when making a contribution is to give an explanation as to why the solution you're proposing is better (not because I have a massive ego, but by pure curiosity)

How to setup the project

When downloading the project, you will need to create a virtual environment as this project was developed using python 3.4.3.

To do so you will need to navigate inside the project's directory and issue the following command:

virtualenv -p python3 .

this will create a virtual environment in the current folder.

To activate the virtualenv just run:

source bin/activate

The next step will be to download the project's dependencies, to do so just quickly run:

pip install -r requirements.txt

you can then either issue:

python wsgi.py

which will run a server on your localhost at port 5000.

Or you can replicate my setup by following this tutorial.

Rename the config_example.py file found inside the pythonista package to config.py and add your info and credentials to it.

If you chose to follow the tutorial linked above, to launch the server you simply have to call

sudo start pythonista

and the server should be running.

To view the site, open your browser and visit the url (or ip address) attached to your server.

To run the tests just call

python manage.py test

Migrations

The migrations are handled in three steps.

First, initialise the migrations

python manage.py db init

Then run the migrations

python manage.py db migrate

and finally, upgrade the DB

python manage.py db upgrade

Todo

Create a reset password functionality
Create a front end using a framework of your choice
Refactor the tests
Test email confirmation functionality
Decorate /api/confirm/token with ogin required
Refactor serialise_json decorator
Check that the company (user) is confirmed before letting them log in

The Endpoints

Auth

/register GET 

/login    GET 

/login    POST 

/logout   POST

API

/api/companies                GET

/api/companies                POST

/api/companies/<id>           GET 

/api/companies/<id>           PUT

/api/companies/<id>/jobs      GET 

/api/jobs                     GET

/api/jobs                     POST

/api/jobs/<id>                GET

/api/jobs/<id>                PUT

/api/jobs/<contract_type>     GET 

*contract types include full-time / part-time / internship / contract / remote*

Other notes

All helper functions and methods are commented

Tests are run using the unittest standard library (feel free to use the tool of your choice)

Next features to implement

Profile pictures for companies
Allow users to apply within the site

Zabanaa/pythonista