RentHub - Professional Equipment Rental Platform

RentHub is a full-stack web application built with Django that enables users to browse, rent, and manage high-quality equipment. The project demonstrates advanced Django concepts including custom authentication, REST API, asynchronous tasks, and deployment.

Live Demo: renthub-django-production.up.railway.app

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Table of Contents

• Features
• Technical Stack
• Project Structure
• REST API
• Setup Instructions
• Environment Variables
• Running Tests
• Deployment

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Features

Authentication & User Management

• Custom user model with email-based authentication (AbstractBaseUser)
• User registration, login, logout
• Profile management with profile picture upload (ImageField)
• Automatic profile creation via post_save signal
• Welcome email sent on registration

Catalog

• Full CRUD for rental items (create, read, update, delete)
• Item image upload
• Search by name and description (Q objects)
• Category filtering
• Custom template filter for currency formatting

Reservations (Bookings)

• Many-to-many relationship between reservations and items
• Automatic total price calculation via model @property
• Custom form validation (end date must be after start date)
• Reservation confirmation email sent asynchronously via Celery
• Users can only view and edit their own reservations

Wishlist

• Each user has an auto-created wishlist (via post_save signal)
• Toggle items in/out of wishlist from item detail page
• Wishlist count shown on profile page

Reviews

• Users can add reviews to items
• Only review owners can edit or delete their review
• Nested display on item detail page

Access Control

• LoginRequiredMixin on all protected views
• Custom CheckUserIsOwner and CheckUserIsItemOwner mixins
• Two user groups in admin: Renters and Owners with distinct permissions

REST API (Django REST Framework)

• Full CRUD API for Items and Reservations
• Custom IsOwnerOrReadOnly permission class
• Session authentication
• Default permission: IsAuthenticatedOrReadOnly

Async Tasks (Celery + Redis)

• Celery worker with Redis as message broker
• django-celery-results for task result storage in the database
• Async email sending on reservation creation

Admin Panel

• Custom UserAdmin with AppUserCreationForm and AppUserChangeForm
• Registered models: AppUser, Profile, Item, Review, Reservation, Wishlist
• Custom list_display, list_filter, search_fields on all models

Security & Deployment

• Environment variables via python-dotenv
• Separate settings_production.py for production deployment
• WhiteNoise for static file serving
• dj-database-url for DATABASE_URL parsing
• Gunicorn as WSGI server
• HTTPS via Railway proxy (SECURE_PROXY_SSL_HEADER)

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Technical Stack

Layer	Technology
Backend	Django 6.0 (Python 3.12)
Frontend	Bootstrap 5.3, Django Template Language
Database	PostgreSQL 16+
REST API	Django REST Framework
Async Tasks	Celery 5.x + Redis
Task Results	django-celery-results
Static Files	WhiteNoise
Deployment	Railway (Gunicorn)
Image Handling	Pillow

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Project Structure

renthub-django/
├── accounts/                   # Custom user model, profile, authentication
│   ├── managers.py             # AppUserManager (email-based auth)
│   ├── models.py               # AppUser, Profile
│   ├── signals.py              # Auto-create profile + send welcome email
│   ├── forms.py                # Registration and profile edit forms
│   ├── views.py                # Register, profile detail/edit/delete
│   └── admin.py                # Custom UserAdmin
├── catalog/                    # Items and reviews
│   ├── models.py               # Item, Review
│   ├── api_views.py            # DRF API views for items
│   ├── serializers.py          # ItemSerializer, ReviewSerializer
│   └── management/commands/seed.py
├── bookings/                   # Reservations
│   ├── models.py               # Reservation (ManyToMany with Item)
│   ├── tasks.py                # Celery task: send confirmation email
│   ├── api_views.py            # DRF API views for reservations
│   └── serializers.py          # ReservationSerializer
├── wishlist/                   # User wishlists
│   ├── models.py               # Wishlist (ManyToMany with Item)
│   └── signals.py              # Auto-create wishlist on user registration
├── common/                     # Shared utilities
│   ├── mixins.py               # CheckUserIsOwner, CheckUserIsItemOwner
│   ├── permissions.py          # IsOwnerOrReadOnly (DRF)
│   └── templatetags/           # custom_tags (currency filter)
└── renthub/                    # Project configuration
    ├── settings.py
    ├── settings_production.py
    ├── celery.py
    └── api_urls.py

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REST API

Base URL: /api/

Endpoint	Method	Auth Required	Description
/api/items/	GET	No	List all items
/api/items/	POST	Yes	Create item
/api/items/<id>/	GET	No	Item detail
/api/items/<id>/	PUT/PATCH	Owner only	Update item
/api/items/<id>/	DELETE	Owner only	Delete item
/api/reservations/	GET	Yes	List user's reservations
/api/reservations/	POST	Yes	Create reservation
/api/reservations/<id>/	GET	Yes	Reservation detail
/api/reservations/<id>/	PUT/PATCH	Owner only	Update reservation
/api/reservations/<id>/	DELETE	Owner only	Delete reservation

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Setup Instructions

1. Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/vivitoa/renthub-django.git
cd renthub-django

2. Create and activate virtual environment:

python -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate        # Linux/Mac
venv\Scripts\activate           # Windows

3. Install dependencies:

pip install -r requirements.txt

4. Configure environment variables:

Create a .env file in the project root (see Environment Variables).

5. Create the PostgreSQL database:

psql -U postgres -c "CREATE DATABASE renthub_db;"

6. Run migrations:

python manage.py migrate

7. Seed the database:

python manage.py seed

8. Create a superuser:

python manage.py createsuperuser

9. Start Redis (required for Celery):

redis-server

10. Start Celery worker (in a separate terminal):

celery -A renthub worker -l info

11. Start the development server:

python manage.py runserver

Visit http://127.0.0.1:8000

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Environment Variables

Create a .env file in the project root:

SECRET_KEY=your-secret-key-here
DB_NAME=renthub_db
DB_USER=postgres
DB_PASSWORD=your_password
DB_HOST=localhost
DB_PORT=5432
COMPANY_EMAIL=noreply@renthub.com
EMAIL_BACKEND=django.core.mail.backends.console.EmailBackend
CELERY_BROKER_URL=redis://localhost:6379/0

The .env file is listed in .gitignore and will not be committed to version control.

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Running Tests

python manage.py test

The test suite includes 22 tests covering:

• Model creation and validation
• Signal handlers (profile and wishlist auto-creation)
• View access control (login required, ownership checks)
• Form validation
• Celery task invocation (mocked with unittest.mock.patch)

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Deployment

The application is deployed on Railway with:

• PostgreSQL and Redis as Railway services
• Gunicorn as the WSGI server
• WhiteNoise for static file serving
• dj-database-url for database configuration from DATABASE_URL

Environment variables required in Railway:

Variable	Value
DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE	renthub.settings_production
SECRET_KEY	your production secret key
DATABASE_URL	auto-provided by Railway Postgres
REDIS_URL	auto-provided by Railway Redis
ALLOWED_HOSTS	your Railway domain
CSRF_TRUSTED_ORIGINS	https://your-railway-domain

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Developed as an Individual Project for the Django Advanced Course @ SoftUni