If you're here, thanks for deciding to contribute to this project - we need you! The project is built with Python's django and django rest framework, so be sure you have Python already installed into your machine.
- Getting Started
- Adding new categories
- Modifying Categories
- Inputting Data
- General Code Changes
- Community
To contribute to the project, you can add new categories, update existing categories, make changes to improve security, change views methods, or. just something as little as converting a PositiveIntegerField to a PositiveSmallIntegerField in the models.
Just as long as there's a good enough reason for that, as should be stated in your pull request.
In whatever contribution you make, please update the contributors.MD file to include your NAME, SLACK USERNAME, GITHUB AND TWITTER LINKS, following the order seen in the file
To start, fork the project and clone the copy into your local machine. Set up a virtual environment by running virtualenv env and activate the virtual environment by running env\Scripts\activate.
After activating the virtual env, install required modules by running pip install -r requirements.txt, assuming you have pip installed.
Create a new Python file in your project root named secrets.py, and add: SECRET_KEY = 'can_be-any%thing' . Open the settings.py file and set DEBUG = True. Don't bother about AWS keys, as Django uses it's own media settings when DEBUG is set to True.
This project was designed using Django's best practices, including creating an app for each individual category, each with it's own directory with serializers.py, views.py, urls.py and models.py files. This helps in debugging and in modularity.
The models.py file is used to architect the fields present in the category you're adding.
The serializers.py file is used for - you guessed it right - serializing our models.
To create a new category, run python manage.py createapp <category_name>. Add the new app to Django in the settings.INSTALLED_APPS. Add it into the admin panel by making appropriate changes in the category_name/admin.py file.
Also create a urls.py file for the app url patterns, and include it in the root urls, following the procedures used in other included apps' url patterns.
Open the models.py file and design your model. Please open models file of an already established category app to see and follow the same procedure, e.g, if a category has a time field that represents just the year, without a day and month, please use a PositiveSmallIntegerField() instead of a DateField() or DateTimeField(); and also adding null=True, blank=True, default='N\A' as parameters to the model fields for optional fields, or fields which might have values in some instances of the category, and not in some.
After creating your models, create a serializers.py field to create your serializers - using preferably a serializer.ModelSerializer class extension. Then open up the views.py file and create a generics view, again, using an alreadt established app's views file as reference. Our API data is set to be handle filtering, ordering and searching, so please add that to the views.
Test your changes via the localhost, and try adding a few utems to your new category, assuming you kbow how to run local server and create super users in Django. If everything works well, use this guide to make a pull request.
Please ensure to add a very descriptive 'essay' about your changes and/or additions - seriously, please.
Maybe for some reason you think an alread existing category or categories need(s) some changes to it's field, or should not be there at all, please also fork, clone, set up virtual environment, and pip install -r requirements.txt as above. Open the models.py file of the category's app directory and make your changes to it. If the changes should be in the views or serializers, please do that, while not forgetting to include changes and reason for them in your pull request.
Setting up views and serializers is not the major problem, data inputting is! So we'll greatly appreciate contributions in this category. To help fill/input data in any category, please fill out this form. Before then, if the category has an ImageField(), please have the copy of the image uploaded to a cloud sharing site (preferably google drive or dropbox) and provide the sharing link in the form. Please make sure the uploaded image's shareable feature is turned on. It should take 3-72 hours for the data to be reviewed and added by an admin, depending on amount of data to be processed.
This could be from added security, or code refactoring, or installation of a package to ease a process, or even taking your yime out to add comments to code lines. Whatever the case may be, please add it with the reason in your pull request.
You can find the Developers Nigeria (Devs Ng) slack group here. Please be sure to send a join request. We will take on community projects from time to time.