Building a Marketplace Web Site - Owned Rows - Milestone 1

In this assignment, you will build a web site that is roughly equivalent to

https://market.dj4e.com/m1

This web site is a classified ad web site. People can view ads without logging in and if they log in, they can create their own ads. You can log into this site using an account: facebook and a password of Marketnn! where "nn" is the two-digit number of Dr. Chuck's race car or the numeric value for asterisk in the ASCII character set.

You will build this application by borrowing parts and pieces from the code that runs

https://samples.dj4e.com/

and combining them into a single application.

The autograder expects that you will copy and adapt code from the provided examples. If you just build a "roughly equivalent application" (perhaps using AI) that seems to work OK - the autograder might be looking for a different pattern in the HTML of your application and reject your application.

Initial Setup

We provide an initial github repository for you to checkout and install on PythonAnywhere with most of the base code already built so you can add your application.

If you have not already done so, follow the instructions at:

https://github.com/csev/dj4e-market

If you are taking this course on www.dj4e.com, you should have this running and submitted to the autograder for credit before continuing below.

Building the Mkt Application

In this section, you will pull bits and pieces of the sample applications repository and pull them into your mkt application.

Important Note: If you find you have a problem saving files in the PythonAnywhere system using their browser-based editor, you might need to turn off your ad blocker for this site - weird but true.

(1) Create a new mkt application within your market project:

cd ~/django_projects/market
python manage.py startapp mkt

(2) Then add the application to your market/config/settings.py

INSTALLED_APPS = [

... Keep all the existing entries ...

'taggit',
'home.apps.HomeConfig',
'mkt.apps.MktConfig',

]

(3) Then edit your market/config/urls.py to add a route to the new application:

(4) Use this in your mkt/models.py:

from django.db import models
from django.core.validators import MinLengthValidator
from django.conf import settings

class Ad(models.Model) :
    title = models.CharField(
            max_length=200,
            validators=[MinLengthValidator(2, "Title must be greater than 2 characters")]
    )
    price = models.DecimalField(max_digits=7, decimal_places=2, null=True)
    text = models.TextField()
    owner = models.ForeignKey(settings.AUTH_USER_MODEL, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
    created_at = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)
    updated_at = models.DateTimeField(auto_now=True)

    # Shows up in the admin list
    def __str__(self):
        return self.title

(5) Copy the owner.py file from dj4e-samples/myarts to your mkt folder. This is the one file you do not have to change at all (thanks to object orientation 😊).

(6) The files admin.py, views.py, urls.py, and the templates in the myarts folder will require significant adaptation to be suitable for a classified ad application and the above model. A big part of this assignment is to use the view classes that are in owner.py and used in views.py. The new owner field should not be shown to the user on the create and update forms, it should be automatically set by the classes like OwnerCreateView in owner.py. If you see an "owner" drop down in your create screen the program is not implemented correctly and will fail the autograder.

(7) Adapt the templates in myarts/templates/myarts as a starting point to create the needed templates in mkt/templates/mkt.

(8) When you are implementing the update and delete views, make sure to follow the url patterns for the update and delete operations. They should be of the form /ad/<int:pk>/update and /ad/<int:pk>/delete. Something like the following should work in your urls.py:

from django.urls import path, reverse_lazy
from . import views

app_name='mkt'
urlpatterns = [
    path('', views.AdListView.as_view(), name='all'),
    path('ad/<int:pk>', views.AdDetailView.as_view(), name='detail'),
    path('ad/create',
        views.AdCreateView.as_view(success_url=reverse_lazy('mkt:all')), name='create'),
    path('ad/<int:pk>/update',
        views.AdUpdateView.as_view(success_url=reverse_lazy('mkt:all')), name='update'),
    path('ad/<int:pk>/delete',
        views.AdDeleteView.as_view(success_url=reverse_lazy('mkt:all')), name='delete'),
]

(9) As you build the application, use check periodically as you complete some of the code.

python manage.py check

(10) Once your application is mostly complete and can pass the check without error, add the new models to your migrations and database tables:

python manage.py makemigrations
python manage.py migrate

Adding the Bootstrap menu to the top of the page

Next we will add the bootstrap navigation bar to the top of your application as shown in:

https://chuckplace.dj4e.com/

This top bar includes a 'Create Ad' navigation item and the login/logout navigation with gravatar when the user logs in.

(1) Edit all four of the mkt files in mkt/templates/mkt to change them so they extend mkt/base_menu.html. Change the first line of each file from:

{% extends "base_bootstrap.html" %}

to be:

{% extends "base_menu.html" %}

(2) Create home/templates/base_menu.html with this code:

{% extends 'base_bootstrap.html' %}
{% load app_tags %} <!-- see home/templatetags/app_tags.py and dj4e-samples/settings.py -->
{% block navbar %}
<nav class="navbar navbar-expand-lg navbar-dark bg-dark" style="border-radius:10px !important">
  <div class="container-fluid">
    <a class="navbar-brand" href="{% url 'mkt:all' %}">{{ settings.APP_NAME }}</a>
    <ul class="navbar-nav">
      {% url 'mkt:all' as x %}
      <li {% if request.get_full_path == x %}class="active"{% endif %}>
          <a class="nav-link" href="{% url 'mkt:all' %}" role="button">Ads</a></li>
    </ul>
    <ul class="navbar-nav">
      {% if user.is_authenticated %}
      <li>
         <a class="nav-link" href="{% url 'mkt:create' %}">Create Ad</a>
      </li>
      <li class="nav-item dropdown">
         <a class="nav-link dropdown-toggle" href="#" id="rightnavDropdown" role="button" data-bs-toggle="dropdown" aria-expanded="false">
            <img style="width: 25px;" src="{{ user|gravatar:60 }}"/><b class="caret"></b>
        </a>
        <ul class="dropdown-menu dropdown-menu-end" aria-labelledby="rightnavDropdown">
            <li><a class="dropdown-item" href="{% url 'logout' %}?next={% url 'mkt:all' %}">Logout</a></li>
        </ul>
       </li>
       {% else %}
       <li class="nav-item"><a class="nav-link" href="{% url 'login' %}?next={% url 'mkt:all' %}">Login</a></li>
       {% endif %}
    </ul>
  </div>
</nav>
{% endblock %}

(3) Find the line in your base_bootstrap.html that looks like this:

    <meta name="dj4e-code" content="99999999">

and change the 9999999 to be "missing" Note that there will be two meta tags, one for dj4e-code and one for dj4e - keep both in this file.

Make sure to check the autograder for additional markup requirements.

When you are done, you should see an 'Ads' menu on the left and a 'Create Ad' link on the right just like the sample implementation.

Manual Testing

It is always a good idea to manually test your application before submitting it for grading. Here are a set of manual test steps:

Fun Challenges

(1) Make yourself a gravatar at https://en.gravatar.com/ - it is super easy and you will see your avatar when you log in in your application and elsewhere with gravatar enabled apps. The gravatar can be anything you like - it does not have to be a picture of you. The gravatar is associated an email address so make sure to give an email address to the user you create with createsuperuser.

(2) Change your home/static/favicon.ico to a favicon of your own making. I made my favicon at https://favicon.io/favicon-generator/ - it might not change instantly after you update the favicon because they are cached extensively. Probably the best way to test is to go right to the favicon url after you update the file and press 'Refresh' and/or switch browsers. Sometimes the browswer caching is "too effective" on a favicon so to force a real reload (command/ctrl + shift + r) to check if the new favicon is really being served you can add a GET parameter to the URL to force it to be re-retrieved:

https://market.dj4e.com/favicon.ico?x=42

Change the x value to something else if you want to test over and over.

(3) To make the social login work. Take a look at github_settings-dist.py, copy it into market/config/github_settings.py and go through the process on github to get your client ID and secret. The documentation is in comments of the file. Also take a look at dj4e-samples/urls.py and make sure that the "Switch to social login" code is correct and at the end of your market/config/github_settings.py.

You can register two applications with github - one on localhost and one on PythonAnywhere. If you are using github login on localhost - make sure that you register http://127.0.0.1:8000/ instead of http://localhost:8000/ and use that in your browser to test your site. If you use localhost, you probably will get the The redirect_uri MUST match the registered callback URL for this application. error message when you use social login.

Working with Ambiguity

This assignment is more vague than previous assignments - on purpose. The goal is to get closer to the development model of actual applications. You know what you want to build and start with a mostly blank slate. You look at sample code, reuse some code from stuff you built earlier, do some online searching and glue pieces of what you find together to make your application. Of course as you are gluing bits from various places together, they always break and you have to adjust things so they fit in your application.

So this is kind of like the real world - when you have to build your own first application for someone else.

It is not tricky on purpose. We want you to succeed in this assignment. But we do want you to do less cutting-and-pasting and more writing Django applications.

Debugging: Searching through all your files in the bash shell

If you have errors, you might find the grep tool very helpful in figuring out where you might find your errors. For example, lets say after you did all the editing, and went to the mkt url and got this error:

NoReverseMatch at /mkt
'myarts' is not a registered namespace

You thought you fixed all the instances where the string "myarts" was in your code, but you must have missed one. You can manually look at every file individually or use the following command to let the computer do the searching:

cd ~/django_projects/mysite
grep -ri myarts *

You might see output like this:

mkt/templates/mkt/list.html:<a href="{% url 'login' %}?next={% url 'myarts:all' %}">Login</a>

The grep program searches files in the current folder and subfolders for any lines in any file that have the string "myarts" in them and shows you the file name and the line it is mentioned.

The grep command is the "Generalized Regular Expression Parser" and is one of the most useful Linux commands to know. The 'r' means 'recursive' and the 'i' means 'ignore case. The grep program will save you so much time 😊.

Some Common Errors in This Assignment

Since you are in effect starting with a brand new config/settings.py and config/urls.py, you might find a few problems when you are running python manage.py check - I will keep a list of the common problems and their solutions here:

(1) If you have a problem running migrate or makemigrations in step 10 above, you might want to start with a fresh MySQL database. Since we are using a MYSQL server, we can't just delete the SQLite file and start over - but it is not much more difficult.

First go into Consoles and start a MySQL console. You should go into a shell and see a prompt like this - type the command SHOW DATABASES; to find your database:

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.
mysql> SHOW DATABASES;
+--------------------+
| Database           |
+--------------------+
| information_schema |
| dj4e$market        |
| dj4e$default       |
+--------------------+
3 rows in set (4.05 sec)
mysql>

Note - never touch the information_schema database - if you mess with this you break your entire MySQL installation and may need to create a completely new PythonAnywhere account. Leave information_schema alone.

Pick the database you are using (in your settings.py) and issuer the USE command to select the database and run the SHOW TABLES; command:

mysql> use dj4e$market;
Database changed
mysql> SHOW TABLES;
+----------------------------+
| Tables_in_dj4e$market      |
+----------------------------+
| mkt_ad                     |
| django_admin_log           |
| django_content_type        |
| django_migrations          |
| django_session             |
| social_auth_association    |
| social_auth_code           |
| social_auth_nonce          |
| social_auth_partial        |
| social_auth_usersocialauth |
+----------------------------+
10 rows in set (0.00 sec)
mysql>

Then we will get rid of the mkt_ad table and its associated migration records:

mysql> DROP TABLE mkt_ad;
mysql> DELETE FROM django_migrations WHERE app='mkt';

Then, in the bash shell, you can remove and re-make the migrations

cd ~/django_projects/market
rm mkt/migrations/00*

Then go back to step 9 and pick up with the makemigrations and migrate steps as well as createuser is needed.