Library Management System

This is my attempt to recreate (using Django) the library management system built by Wes Doyle. You can view the code for the original application here.

The two applications are now exactly the same, because I have made some minor modifications and additions.

Developement setup

Steps to locally setup development project.

Prerequisites

Ensure that you have Python 3.8 installed on your machine. You can check by running,

$ python --version

You will also need Pipenv in order to install the necessary packages.

Installation

$ git clone https://github.com/bledidalipaj/library-management-system.git
$ cd library-management-system
$ pipenv install

The applicatation needs to read enviroment variables to run properly. To set those variables locally, copy the .env.sample file as .env

$ cp .env.sample .env

Apply Django database migrations locally.

$ python manage.py migrate

Create a local superuser account.

$ python manage.py createsuperuser

Start the local webserver.

$ python manage.py startserver

You can stop the webserver by pressing Control + C

Set up email

In order for the application to work you will need to configure an email, which the application will use to send the necessary notifications.

You can do that by setting the following environment variables in the .env file:

EMAIL_BACKEND=... EMAIL_HOST=... EMAIL_USE_TLS=... EMAIL_PORT=... EMAIL_HOST_USER=... EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD=...

I write below an example of using gmail as an email service:

EMAIL_BACKEND=django.core.mail.backends.smtp.EmailBackend EMAIL_HOST=smtp.gmail.com EMAIL_USE_TLS=True EMAIL_PORT=587 EMAIL_HOST_USER=youremail EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD=yourpassword

If you do not want to configure the email, then you must set the following variable in the .env file and ignore the other ones:

EMAIL_BACKEND=django.core.mail.backends.console.EmailBackend

Load initial data

After the initial setup the application has no data. If you want you manually add data through the admin or you can execute the following commands that will add some initial data for you:

1. Load initial data for the Author model:

$ python manage.py loaddata authors.json --app lms --format json

2. Load initial data for Status model:

$ python manage.py loaddata status.json --app lms --format json

3. Load initial data for LibraryBranch model:

$ python manage.py loaddata library_branches.json --app lms --format json

4. Load initial data for Book model

$ python manage.py loaddata books.json --app lms --format json

5. Load initial data for Patorn model:

$ python manage.py loaddata patrons.json --app lms --format json

Export data

Export Patron model data to patron.json

$ python manage.py dumpdata lms.patron --indent 4 --output lms/fixtures/patrons.json

Person information

Persons' information were generated using this website https://www.fakenamegenerator.com/gen-random-us-us.php

Design Inspiration

• https://dribbble.com/shots/8583284-Profile/attachments/846813?mode=media

Libraries Used

• Date Picker flatpickr v4