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!
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