Kit

Kit is a Django project that provides built-in apps and REST API. It also offers several kinds of built-in web sites as well, like conversion and landing page.

It is intend to give you a kit of models, tools and utilities if you will, so you can have your service (landing page, conversion page, REST API, etc.) up and running in no time. You can customize every aspect of it as you can imagine.

Features

• User Account with Email Based Authentication
• Web Sites
• Forms and CSRF
• Apps
• REST API
• Core REST API
• Core Functionalities
• SASS for CSS ans Static Files
• Doxygen Documentation
• Setup
• Road Map

User Account with Email Based Authentication

Kit uses email based user authentication, which is built on Django's AbstractBaseUser class, so users use their email addresses to log-in.

Web Sites

Kit offers conversion (lean startup) page and landing page via its conversion and landingPage apps respectively. So you can get both sites running in no time. These sites have built-in captcha feature for their forms.

Landing Page Example

Conversion Web Page Example

Forms and CSRF

The web sites provided with the project contain forms such as contact and newsletter subscription. I have built a captcha system based on Django's CSRF protection system in order to prevent automated spams.

I use JavaScript to render a captcha code on a canvas in the forms. This code is portion of the token obtained from rendered hidden csrfmiddlewaretoken input. This token is provided by Django so it is very easy to check it on the server side.

The forms have a captcha input, which is there to send the captcha to the server, even though they are not required by the models which the forms use.

Visitor enters the captcha code into captcha input he/she sees on the canvas and submits the form. Upon receiving the request, the view uses Form.is_valid method, which triggers Form.clean_capthca method that I implemented. If the captcha doesn't match pre-determined portion of the csrf token provided previously, the submission fails and the visitor is asked to confirm the captcha.

For this to work the way we want, we have to renew the csrf token every time we receive a GET method for the page. We do that by invoking django.middleware.csrf.rotate_token function in the view where applicable.

Rendered form looks like the one below.

PLEASE NOTE: You must edit the following email settings in projectSettings.common module since forms send email upon successful submissions.

• EMAIL_USE_TLS
• EMAIL_PORT
• EMAIL_HOST
• EMAIL_HOST_USER
• DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL
• SERVER_EMAIL
• EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD

Apps

App	Description
commonStatic	App for serving common static files, like css, js, etc.
contact	Contact, address, email, phone, social media
content	Content and items
conversion	Conversion web site
core	Core functionalities and utilities
errorPage	Renders error pages like 400, 404, etc.
faq	Frequently Asked Questions
landingPage	Landing page
language	Language model, provides language option to models
newsletter	Newsletter/subscribers related app
privacyNotice	Privacy Notice
projectSettings	Project settings, production, development, etc.
restAPICore	Core functionalities for REST API
simpleAPIAccount	Simple REST API account (doesn't require user registration)
termsOfUse	Terms of Use
testimonial	Testimonial related app
userAccount	E-mail based user account
visitorCount	Track user count for all URL that you project has

REST API

The project provides built-in REST API for all the models it uses. Every app also has example Postman collections in <APP_NAME>/data/postman folder. Please check RES API documentation for more information.

Core REST API

Kit REST API uses some core functionalities that I provide in restAPICore app. I'll keep updating this app for more complex functionalities.

Core Functionalities

Kit provides some core functionalities via core app.

SASS for CSS and Static Files

The project uses SASS for CSS. I provided some abstract SASS logic that you can inherit and change based on your needs. Please check <APP_NAME>/static/<APP-NAME>/sass folder of the apps where applicable.

Likewise provided static files live under <APP_NANE>/static/ folder of the apps where applicable.

Please check commonStatic app for more information.

Doxygen Documentation

Python API documentation (Generated with Doxygen) is provided. Please check kit_doc/doxygen/html/index.html.

Setup

Create a virtual environment. I use Python 3.8.2.

virtualenv -p python3 <NAME>

Activate it.

cd <NAME>;
source bin/activate;

Install requirements.

pip3 install -r requirements.txt

Migrate.

python manage.py makemigrations;
python manage.py migrate;

Create super user.

python manage.py createsuperuser;

Create demo data.

python manage.py createData kit;

Collect static.

python manage.py collectstatic -i *.sass;

Run server.

python manage.py runserver;

Enjoy!

Roadmap

• Adding user registration and verification web pages.
• Adding user agreement app.
• REST API implementation for user account groups and permissions.
• REST API implementation of conversion.models.Subscriber model.
• Adding advanced features to REST API core app.
• Adding React control panel.