Kadermiyanyedi / zaida

A comprehensive layout for your next social networking service.

zaida

A comprehensive layout for your next social networking service. zaida strictly follows REST principles (this repository does not contain a front-end application).

Purpose

This is just another social media application; however I'm trying to do more than just a CRUD application. There are many pitfalls while designing social media applications, especially when it comes to user relations and interactions. To elaborate, here is an example from the auth module; a method that determines if the message could be sent to a user:

def can_send_message(self, to_user):
    if self == to_user:
        return False

    if not (to_user.is_accessible and self.is_accessible):
        return False

    if self.has_block_rel(to_user):
        # One of the users is blocking
        # another, so deny messages.
        return False

    if to_user.is_following(self):
        # The sender is followed by recipient, so messaging should
        # happen without intervention. A message request will be created
        # and accepted automatically, so in the future, (when this
        # relation breaks) participants can continue messaging each
        # other without having to send/accept new conversation requests.
        return True

    # If the recipient is not following the sender, we need
    # to look into conversation request relations.

    # In case this sender previously sent a conversation
    # request, and it was accepted by the recipient.
    recipient_accepted_request = ConversationRequest.objects.filter(
        date_accepted__isnull=False,
        sender=self,
        recipient=to_user,
    )

    if recipient_accepted_request.exists():
        return True

    try:
        # Check if this message is sent as a reply. To reply,
        # the user needs to accept the request first, so 'accept
        # date' should not be null to send this message.
        replying = ConversationRequest.objects.get(
            sender=to_user,
            recipient=self,
        )
        return replying.date_accepted is not None
    except ConversationRequest.DoesNotExist:
        # Not a reply either, this means it might be a new
        # conversation request, or new messages are added to
        # unaccepted request. Let's check if the user allows message
        # requests from strangers.
        return to_user.allows_all_messages

Notice that remarkable amount of logic is already abstracted away in other methods.

And it's not just about logic; it is also important to figure out a good database design and optimized queries while considering the overall application design.

zaida (hopefully), will contain all the basic social-media related functionality in order to bootstrap a new social media application; while being comprehensive on what it is doing.

Feature rundown

• auth
  • CRU operations
  • Blocking operations
  • Following operations
    • Follow requests
    • Ability to mark profile 'private'
  • Profile pictures
    • Thumbnail generation
    • Image validation
      • Image scaling & compression on upload
      • Mime type validation
  • verification
    • Registration flow
      • No account generation before email validation
    • Password reset flow
    • Email change flow
• messaging
  • CRUD operations
  • One-to-one conversations & messaging
  • Message requests
  • Read receipts*
  • Ability to disable messages from strangers
  • Instant messaging with WebSocket
    • Ticket-based authentication
• miscellaneous
  • Email service
  • Autogenerated API documentation
  • Unit-test & integration tests with high coverage
  • Ready to use development setup with Docker
  • technology stack
    • PostgreSQL as database
    • Redis as cache manager & broker
    • Celery as task queue
    • Python
      • Django web framework
      • django_rest_framework for REST API
      • channels for WebSocket support