This blog was developed as a practice for understanding Python's Django Web Framework. The blog was built and designed via The Net Ninja's Django Blog tutorial. After completing his tutorial, I added more functionality to it and improved the blog's overall User Experience.
Additional functionality includes:
- Serving BootStrap files
- BootStrap footer
- Images showing in thumbnails on blog's main page
- Showing newest blogs added on top
- Ability to update a blog
- Ability to delete a blog
- Only the user whose the author of the blog can update or delete it
- Improved styling
After adding these features, I added Django REST APIs support as well as a search bar to the blog. The APIs were added by taking inspiration from Coding With Mitch's and Parwiz Forogh's Django REST Framework tutorials, albeit my implementation was a little different. Through the APIs, the following operations are supported:
- Signup a new user
- Login an existing user
- Token Authentication
- Adding a new article
- Updating an article; only the author of the blog can perform this action
- Deleting an article; only the author of the blog can perform this action
- Viewing all or an individual article
- Pagination for better experience on mobile devices
- Searching for blogs through GET query parameters through the API
- Search bar to the navbar with optional ordering for the Rest API
To access APIs:
!! For signing-up, send POST request to the following endpoint after running server with the following paramters and their values of your choice. NOTE that the params username, password, confirm_password should be written as is:
Endpoint --> localhost:port/api/accounts/signup/
Params:
- username # Your value of username must not contain spaces
- password
- confirm_password
If the passwords will not match or you'll miss a required field, appropriate Response with Status Codes will be returned. You will receive your authentication token in reply to this POST request. Copy & paste it to use it for upcoming operations.
!! For logging-in, send POST request to the following endpoint with your registered username and password as well as the authentication token received from the previous step:
Endpoint --> localhost:port/api/accounts/login/
Params:
- username
- password
- Authorization # Authorization token
This step will log you in and will return your authentication token in Response.
!! For viewing all articles, send a GET request to the following endpoint with the following parameters. You'll receive an array of articles as JSON objects in Response:
Endpoint --> localhost:port/api/articles/
Params:
- Authorization # Authorization token as its value
!! For viewing a single article, send a GET request to the following endpoint with the parameters below. You'll receive a array of articles with a single JSON object in Response:
Endpoint --> localhost:port/api/articles/id of an article
Params:
- Authorization # Authorization token as its value
!! For posting an article, send a POST request to the following endpoint with the parameters listed below. You will receive a JSON object of the newly created article.
Endpoint --> localhost:port/api/articles/
Params:
- title # Name of article
- slug # Slug of title
- body # Content of your article
- thumb # Image as thumbnail
- Authorization # Authorization token as its value
!! To update an article, send a PUT request to the following endpoint with the parameters listed below. You will receive a JSON object of the newly created article.
Endpoint --> localhost:port/api/articles/id of article you want to update/update/
Params:
- title # Name of article
- slug # Slug of title
- body # Content of your article
- thumb # Image as thumbnail
- Authorization # Authorization token as its value
NOTE that if you are not the author of this article, you will not be able to edit it!
!! To delete an article, send a DELETE request to the following endpoint with the parameters listed below. You will receive a appropriate Status Codes in Response.
Endpoint --> localhost:port/api/articles/id of article you want to delete/delete/
Params:
- Authorization # Authorization token as its value
NOTE that if you are not the author of this article, you will not be able to delete it!
!! For viewing Paginated Results for viewing articles (suited for mobile phones), send a GET request to the following endpoint with the parameters listed below:
Endpoint --> localhost:port/api/articles/list/
Params:
- Authorization # Authorization token as its value
!! For viewing Search/filter-based results, send a GET request to the following endpoint with the parameters listed below:
Endpoint --> localhost:port/api/articles/list/?search=searchTerm1&searchTerm2
Params:
- Authorization # Authorization token as its value
!! For viewing Search/filter-based results with ordering, send a GET request to the following endpoint with the parameters listed below:
Endpoint --> localhost:port/api/articles/list/?search=searchTerm1&searchTerm2&ordering=NameOfModelFieldToOrderOn
Params:
- Authorization # Authorization token as its value
You can compare the differences between the blog in the tutorial and my repo from the video titled Django Tutorial #1 from time 1:41 onwards. Massive credits to The Net Ninja for making this tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4cUxeGkcC9ib4HsrXEYpQnTOTZE1x0uc