Blog-Lite

Description:

Blog-Lite is a multi-user app where users can post blog-entries (Posts that reflect and discuss opinions) with appropriate images to spread their ideas in the form of text. The app has features to follow and search other users, and also voice opinions through comments on their posts. A Rest API has also been developed, following the OpenAPI Specifications, which can be used to access and modify the database for the app.

Technologies Used:

Python: Develop the controllers and serve as the host programming language for the app
HTML: Develop the required web-pages
CSS: Style the web-pages
Bootstrap: To make the frontend appealing and easy to navigate
SQLite: Serves as the database for the app
Flask: Serves as the web-framework for the app
- Flask-Restful: Used to develop the RESTful API for the app
- Flask-SQLAlchemy: Used to access and modify the app's SQLite database
- Flask-CORS: Used to enable CORS for the app
Swagger OpenAPI: Used to create the documentation for the API developed for the app
Matplotlib: To create the charts to view the clicks on a post.
CSV: To create the CSV files for the user about their posts
Secrets: To create the token for a user
Git: Version Control

API Design:

The RESTful API was created using the Flask-Restful library for Python according to the OpenAPI Specifications. All the database tables have CRUD operations available through the API. The API uses tokens for authentication for certain requests that require them. The token for a user can only be obtained from the account page of the user that is signed-in. For more information, please refer to the openapi.yaml file.

Architecture and Features:

The application follows the standard MVC architecture. The View of the application is created using HTML, CSS, and Bootstrap. The Controller is created using Python and Flask. The Model is created using SQLite.

The features of the application are as follows:

Signup and Login for users
Ability to view user’s posts, followers, and follows
Navigate and view other’s posts, followers, and follows
Generate API tokens to use user specific requests
See chart showing the clicks on a post
Download the user’s posts and their data as a CSV file
Ability to search, follow, and unfollow other users
User specific feed according to the follows of the user
Create, View, Edit, and Delete posts
Create, View, Edit, and Delete user accounts
Comment to express user’s opinions on posts
RESTful API for the posts, users, comments, and follows available

Instructions to Run the App

Open terminal
cd into the directory of the project
Run python app.py
If an error occurs regarding python dependencies, run pip install -r requirements.txt and then repeat the above step.
For further details regarding the app, refer to Project Report from the docs folder and for details regarding the API, refer to openapi.yaml.

Live Demo: here. Please note that the demo site is static, and hence, certain things won't work.

Video Demo: here

ratheesh / SherryS997-Blog-Lite