ALIAS CHECK

The Alias Check helps confirm the availability of a username on different social networks. While it is intended as a learning project by the Tech Interviews Nigeria that would introduce participants to different technologies in fullstack development, ranging from frontend technologies like NextJS to Flask and SQLite or Postgres on the backend in addition to Docker for development, its utility is quite apparent. For example, small businesses can see the application in the selection of an available and catchy name among major social media platform.

This is project is structured so that the developer can choose to set it up with or without Docker.

PROJECT SETUP

With Docker Compose

To start the project using Docker, even from scratch, run the following command:

docker-compose up

Then go to http://localhost:3000/ to access the frontend or http://localhost:5000/ to access the backend

Backend-only Development

For backend developers that might only need to run the server and database, run the following command:

docker-compose up server

Frontend-only Development

For frontend developers who might not need access to the backend for the features they want to add, stop other services besides client after starting up:

docker-compose up && \
docker stop $(docker-compose ps --services | grep -v client)

NOTES:

Add a -d switch to turn off logging and run the containers in detached mode

docker-compose up -d

or

docker-compose up -d server

While running in detached mode, you can view the logs at any time by running this command:

docker-compose logs

You can check the logs of any one of the three services (client, server and db) running in detached mode like so:

docker-compose logs <service-name>

To continue the streaming the log output, add an -f switch:

docker-compose logs -f <service-name>

Rebuilding Container images

There might be need to rebuild any of the containers. For example, if the data in create.sql changes, you can rebuild the database container by running the command:

docker-compose build db

Force Restarting Containers

In some cases, starting the containers after shutting them down may result in some errors, especially if you make changes affecting the container images. In this case, you can rebuild the container images while starting up the containers:

docker-compose up --build --force-recreate

Shutting Down Containers

You can also wind down the containers to pause development by running the following command:

docker-compose down

Without Docker Compose

Though this project was built for easy startup with Docker, it can also be run without Docker. You would need to run the commands on two terminals, one for the frontend and the other for the backend:

Frontend

On one terminal, go to the frontend folder named client, install dependencies and run the development server:

cd client
npm install
npm run dev

Backend

On another terminal, create and activate a virtual environment, and then install the requirements.

Set Environment Variables

Update project/server/config.py, and then run:

$ cd backend
$ export APP_NAME="ALIAS CHECK API"
$ export APP_SETTINGS="app.config.ProductionConfig"
$ export FLASK_DEBUG=0

By default the app is set to use the production configuration. If you would like to use the development configuration, you can alter the APP_SETTINGS environment variable:

$ export APP_SETTINGS="app.config.DevelopmentConfig"

Using Pipenv Use the .env file to set environment variables:

APP_NAME="ALIAS CHECK API"
APP_SETTINGS="app.config.DevelopmentConfig"
FLASK_DEBUG=1

Create DB

$ python manage.py create-db
$ python manage.py db init
$ python manage.py db migrate

Run the Application

$ python manage.py run

Access the application at the address http://localhost:5000/

Testing

Without coverage:

$ python manage.py test

With coverage:

$ python manage.py cov

Run flake8 on the app:

$ python manage.py flake

or

$ flake8 project