Week 2 - Creating Simple Blog App

Introduction

Welcome back to my journey of building a blog app using Django without using ChatGPT. This week, I focused on implementing key features to enhance my blog app. I added a functionality that allow users to create posts, comment on posts, and like other user's posts.

Here's a detailed breakdown of what I did:

Create Django posts app

python manage.py startapp posts

Designing the Post Model

I started by designing the Post model. This model will store the blog posts created by users:

from django.db import models
from django.contrib.auth.models import User
from django.utils import timezone


class Post(models.Model):
    title = models.CharField(max_length=100)
    description = models.CharField(max_length=200, help_text="Excerpt of the post...")
    content = models.TextField()
    author = models.ForeignKey(User, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
    publication_date = models.DateTimeField(default=timezone.now)

    def __str__(self):
        return self.title

Designing the Comment and Like Model

Next, I created as well the Comment and Like models to allow users to leave comment and like on posts:

class Comment(models.Model):
    post = models.ForeignKey(Post, related_name="comments", on_delete=models.CASCADE)
    author = models.ForeignKey(User, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
    content = models.TextField()
    created_at = models.DateTimeField(default=timezone.now)

    def __str__(self):
        return f"Comment by {self.author} on {self.post}"


class Like(models.Model):
    post = models.ForeignKey(Post, related_name="likes", on_delete=models.CASCADE)
    user = models.ForeignKey(User, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
    created_at = models.DateTimeField(default=timezone.now)

    def __str__(self):
        return f"Like by {self.user} on {self.post}"

Creating Views

I will not include the templates as well. I created views for creating, listing all posts and displaying individual posts:

from django.shortcuts import render, redirect, get_object_or_404
from rest_framework import generics
from django.contrib.auth.decorators import login_required
from .serializer import PostSerializer
from .forms import *
from .models import *

def create_post(request):
    if request.method == "POST":
        form = PostForm(request.POST)
        if form.is_valid():
            newPost = form.save(commit=False)
            newPost.author = request.user
            newPost.save()
            return redirect("posts:my-posts")
    else:
        form = PostForm()
    return render(request, "create_post.html", {"form": form, "show_header": True})

@login_required
def myPosts(request):
    '''
    List the user created posts
    '''
    posts = Post.objects.filter(author=request.user)
    return render(request, "posts_list.html", {"posts": posts, "show_header": True})

def postDetails(request, pk):
    '''
    List all posts in the dashboard and display the comments and likes
    '''
    post = get_object_or_404(Post, pk=pk)
    comment = post.comments.all()
    likes = post.likes.count()
    user_has_liked = post.likes.filter(user=request.user).exists()

    if request.method == "POST":
        comment_form = CommentForm(request.POST)
        if comment_form.is_valid():
            comment = comment_form.save(commit=False)
            comment.post = post
            comment.author = request.user
            comment.save()
            return redirect("posts:post-detail", pk=post.pk)
    else:
        comment_form = CommentForm()
    return render(
        request,
        "main_post.html",
        {
            "post": post,
            "comments": comment,
            "comment_form": comment_form,
            "likes": likes,
            "user_has_liked": user_has_liked,
        },
    )

@login_required
def like_post(request, pk):
    '''
    Handle liking posts
    '''
    post = get_object_or_404(Post, pk=pk)
    like, created = Like.objects.get_or_create(post=post, user=request.user)
    if not created:
        like.delete()
    return redirect("posts:post-detail", pk=post.pk)

Next is the creating urls.py in a posts app

from django.urls import path
from .views import *

app_name = "posts"

urlpatterns = [
    path("createpost/", create_post, name="create-post"),
    path("post/<int:pk>/", postDetails, name="post-detail"),
    path("post/<int:pk>/like/", like_post, name="like-post"),
    path("myposts/", myPosts, name="my-posts"),
]

Challenges and Learnings

This week, I encountered challenges with:

• Ensuring the like button allow users to like a post once.
• Creating form submissions for comments within the post detail view.

Despite these challenges, I learned a lot about handling user interactions and working with Django’s ORM to manage relationships between models.

And that makes my Simple Blog App. Check my Github for more details and a live demo of the app.

Next Week's Goals

I plan to create another Django project to improve my skills and knowledge.

If you have any idea what is a good project to work on or a collaboration on a Django project, please feel free to leave a comment.

Stay tuned for more updates on my journey!