/Fweather

Fun weather in Django, jQuery, and Bootstrap using lots of APIs and deployable using docker

Primary LanguagePythonMIT LicenseMIT

Fweather

The name is a portmanteau of fun and weather! Pronounced fwe-ther This was made using Django, world weather online api, giphy api, gmail api, and sqlite.

TODO: heroku demo link

Subscribing an email in Washington, DC

subscribe

Receiving an email for subscriber in Woburn, MA after verification.

subscribe

Requirements

  • pipenv - setup environment vars
  • pyenv or python 3 - cause python 2 will die soon
  • npm - to install js / css dependencies
  • Sign up for the world weather online api to get historical weather for free for 60 days
  • Sign up for the giphy api to get gifs
  • Sign up for the gmail api to send emails
    • Purposely didn't use Klaviyo or MailChimp because that would make the app WAY too easy ;)
  • Insert tokens in the .env file to keep sensitive information stored as environment variables
    • .env is committed so do not upload a personal one by mistake. Run the command below to ignore local changes.
    • git update-index --assume-unchanged .env

Quick start

Dependencies

python 3.6

pyenv install 3.6.5
pyenv local 3.6.5

pip dependencies

pipenv install

sqlite database schema

python manage.py makemigrations fweather
python manage.py migrate --run-syncdb

js and css

npm i
python manage.py collectstatic

Run

python manage.py runserver --noreload

Note: The --noreload is important as it will prevent the app from running the overriden ready() function twice. The app gets the gmail refresh token on django start.

In production environments, it's better to run it using gunicorn.

gunicorn fweather.wsgi

It's also runable in docker if using ECS or Docker Swarm / Kubernetes to deploy.

# build
docker build -t fweather .
# run daemonized
docker run -p 8000:8000 -d fweather

Admin panel

Register

python manage.py createsuperuser

Login on http://localhost:8000/admin

Management commands

python manage.py send
    --email EMAIL         Send to a particular email
    --email-all           Send to all emails in database

TODO

Essential

  • read info from .env file
  • django skeleton
  • sign up to get giphy api
  • sign up to get openweathermap api
  • sign up page with email and country zip code
  • sign up form submittal using jquery to hit api
  • api checks for email that's already signed
  • api sanitizes input
  • api upserts tiny db with email and country
  • ui always looks like the submission works so no one can see who signed up
  • admin interface
  • foreign key constraint on email
  • admin interface allows editing foreign key
  • use the gmail api to send email
  • get gmail token on boot and check if the token exists already
  • email is sent asynchronously
  • use weather api to get weather for a location
  • verify subscriber using email and uuid.v4()
  • django management command to send out email to every person
  • email contains current weather from the location provided
  • use giphy api to get a related weather gif
  • email contains a gif
  • prompt "are you sure?" before sending email to everyone on the list
  • Replace print statements with logging

Extra

  • [deploy] heroku

    • research postgresql integration since heroku does not persist sqlite dbs
    • installed whitenoise middleware to deliver static files while debug=True

  • [feature] unsubscribe - would have to generate another temp id that only gets sent in emails

  • [feature] email can be written in markdown template

  • [feature] email contains fahrenheit and celsius

  • [feature] email forecasts the week

  • [feature] email is sexy using zurb

  • [feature] curses

  • [sec] recaptcha on subscribe

  • [sec] encrypt email data in database and store key in file or separate database

  • [maint] django tests

  • [doc] sphinx autodoc

Notes

Security

  • Zip codes and emails are validated
  • Only zip codes converted to city, state are returned and printed client side
  • Always returned a successful message (unless bad zip or email) in case someone is guessing at the database for who's already using my fun weather email service
  • Validated emails that subscribed before sending them emails
  • To increase security more, I could add a recaptcha, encrypt email data (or offload emails to mailchimp / klaviyo), and add additional security headers using securityheaders.io as a reference

Re-inventing the wheel

  • I used zipcodes and email_validator instead of recreating my own validation
  • I used bootstrap to make the sign up page formatted and look more appealing

I could have...

  • used MailChimp / klaviyo
    • used API to add the email addresses (less than 2000 are free) and custom text field like zip code or location
    • used API again to send the emails using the custom django manage command
    • e.g. http://eepurl.com/dsmv2P
  • Used flask (soooo much easier) instead of django but then I wouldn't have learned django
  • The above steps would remove the overhead of the database, input injection, PII / GPDR, styles, javascript... so much stuff

Usability

  • Sign up page is using bootstrap so everything looks OK
  • Additional things to add would be a background, maybe a nice navbar at the top, a form rounded edge border

Learned

  • Django basics such as setting up a project, creating a database
  • Django admin section is pretty cool
  • Debugging django in pycharm

Other

  • I could not sign up for Weather Underground because they have a bug on their sign up page

  • I thought if I provided a location for weather it would be too easy for users to fake their location with a simple dropdown. Instead I used zip codes.

    For convenience, here are some sample zip codes

    Location Zip
    Anchorage, AK 99501
    Austin, TX 73301
    Boston, MA 02111
    Seattle, WA 98101
    Washington, DC 20001