reReddit API:

This is the backend api for my reddit clone website, reReddit. It uses the following tools and frameworks:

• Django
• Django Rest Framework
• Django MPTT
• Django Cors Headers
• PostgreSQL (in deployment)
• NGINX (in deployment)

I designed this project to mirror a limited set of the functionality of the real reddit api based on their documentation as a portfolio project and learning exercise. Aside from that this project is not associated with reddit.

A live browseable demo version of the api is available: rereddit.api.clintdunn.org

The other part of this project is a single page react app: reReddit_frontend

Installation:

It would be best to use a virtual environment from virtualenv. I also use the virtualenvwrapper.

Assuming you have them installed you can now create a new virtual env, clone the project, and install the requirements. With Linux:

$ mkvirtualenv DRF
(DRF) $ git clone https://github.com/cdunn6754/reReddit_backend.git ~/reReddit
(DRF) $ cd ~/reReddit/reReddit_backend
(DRF) $ pip install -r requirements.txt

Using the provided database:

A dump from the default sqlite database is provided so that the site can be run with data off the bat. The default settings in settings.py were left to assume a sqlite database would be used. To set up the sqlite database with the data from the dump file on Linux run:

$ sqlite3 db.sqlite3 < db_dump.sql

After running that command to import the data you should be good to go. A super user has been added to the database with the following credentials

• username: reredditUser
• password: reredditUserPassword

Populating a new database:

You don't need to use this database but the website is going to be pretty boring without a significant amount of data. If you would prefer not to use the provided db.sqlite database you can populate your own with the custom management command that was written to populate the database in the first place. Once you have set up and migrated your new database just run

$ python manage seed_database

This command calls several other commands included within each app of the project to create users, subreddits, posts, comments, and comment/post votes. You can customize the database seeding buy altering the seed_database.py file found in the core app or by calling the individual management commands separately (see each app's managment folder).

Running the server

Whatever you decide regarding a databse you should be able to run the tests and start the development server after installing the dependencies

(venv) $ python manage.py test
 ... Success hopefully
(venv) $ python manage.py runserver

Then you can visit the browseable api in your browser at the usual location, localhost:8000.

NOTE: I used Python version 3.6.3 and pip version 19.0.1.

Documentation:

/users/

• GET /users/ Retrieve a list of all users.

• POST /users/login/ Login a user.

  • username
  • password

• POST /users/logout/ (auth) Logout a user.

• POST /users/create/ Create a new user, register.

  • username
  • password
  • email

• GET /users/{username}/ A detail view for the user with username

• PATCH /users/{username}/ (auth) Update the password or email for this user. The username can not be changed. You must be authenticated as the user being updated to access this endpoint. There is currently no email verification implemented.

  • email: optional, this is the updated email
  • new_password: optional
  • current_password

• GET /profile/{username}/ (auth optional) Unlike the other user resources this one is not concerned with the information of the authenticated user. Instead this view can be used to get the profile, i.e. the publicly available, information about any other user. In reReddit_fontend this is used to populate the user profile view. Unauthenticated requests will be accepted and return profile data. If the request is from an authenticated user the posts and comments will contain an accurate vote_state field that indicates the authenticated users previous votes on the comment/post. The ordering of posts and comments is reverse chronological.

/subs/

• GET /subs/ Retrieve a list of all subreddits.

• GET /subs/{title}/ Retrieve the details of a particular subreddit

• POST /subs/{title}/subscribe/ (auth) Subscribe to a subreddit. The action parameter describes whether you would like to subscribe (sub) or unsubscribe (unsub). In both cases the logical option must be selected or an error will result. E.g. if you try to subscribe to a subreddit you are already a member a 400 error will be returned

  • action: must be either sub or unsub

/posts/

• GET /posts/ (auth optional) Retrieve a list of all posts. Authentication is optional in the same sense as for the /users/profile/{users} field above. Authenticated responses will contain a non-zero vote_state field if the authed user has voted on the post previously.

• GET /posts/{pk}/ Retrieve the details of a single post.

• DELETE /posts/{pk}/ The owner or a moderator of the subreddit can delete a post.

• GET /posts/subreddit-list/{subreddit title}/ (auth optional) This endpoint allows a consumer to fetch all of the posts made on a particular subreddit. The optional query parameter is orderby, this can be used to specify the order in which the posts should be returned. Authentication is optional in and is used to provide information for the vote_state field in the response, see /users/profile/{users}.

  • orderby: optional, must be either popular or new

• POST /posts/create/{subreddit_title}/ (auth) Allows authenticated users to create posts to the subreddit. You must already be a member of the subreddit, i.e. subscribed, to create a post.

• title: the title of the new post

• body: the body of the new post

/comments/

• GET /comments/ Retrieve a list of all comments

• POST /comments/ (auth) Allows authenticated users to create a comment on either a post or another comment. The parent_fn (full name, as used in the reddit api) parameter is used to indicate both the type and identity of the parent to the created comment. parent_fn can begin with either 't1_', to indicate that the parent is anther comment, or 't2_' which means that the parent is a post and the created comment is a root comment on that post. In either both cases the prefix should be followed by the pk of the parent comment or post.

  • parent_fn
  • body: the body of the comment

• GET /comments/{pk} Retrieve the details of a single comment.

• PATCH /comments/{pk} (auth) Allows the poster to update the body of a comment. Must be authenticated to edit a comment and must be the poster of the comment.

  • body: The updated comment body

• DELETE /comments/{pk} (auth) Perform a customized delete on the comment. Must be authenticated and the poster of the comment to delete. This does not remove the comment from the database but will overwrite the body and poster fields. The comments are preserved in this way to facilitate reddit-like comment display trees in the front end.

• GET /comments/post/{post pk} (auth optional) Retrieves all comments related to a particular post. The comments are returned in a nested fashion with each primary entry being a root post comment. The orderby optional query parameter can be used as described in the /posts/ section above. Authentication is optional in and is used to provide information for the vote_state field in the response, see /users/profile/{users}.

  • orderby: optional, must be either popular or new

/search/

• GET /search/ A very simple search implementation that searches post titles, subreddit titles and user usernames against a query parameter q. A separate list of each entity type is returned in the response
  • q: the search parameter