Julepost

A lightweight web application for creating and sending digital Christmas cards via email.

Development

1. Virtual Environment and Dependencies

Create and activate a Python virtual environment, then install the required dependencies:

python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate # On Windows use `venv\Scripts\activate`
pip install -r requirements.txt

2. SCSS Compilation

To automatically compile SCSS files to CSS during development, run:

sass --watch static/scss/:static/css/ --style expanded --no-source-map

3. Environment Variables

Create a .env file in the project root with the following content, replacing the placeholders with your actual Gmail address, app password, and application URL (localhost or deployed URL):

GMAIL_USER="mailaddress@gmail.com"
GMAIL_APP_PASSWORD="xxxx yyyy zzzz qqqq"
APP_URL="http://theURL:port_if_needed.com"

Note: Gmail App Password

4. Running the Application Locally

To start the FastAPI server with automatic reload enabled:

uvicorn main:app --reload

Docker Containerization

Julepost can be run inside a Docker container for easier deployment and environment consistency.

Environment Variables

Ensure you have a .env file in the project root with the necessary environment variables as described above.

Build and Run

docker compose up --build -d

The application should be accessible at http://APP_URL by default, where APP_URL is defined in your .env file.