Smart Library Manager 📚

A full-stack, containerized web application for managing your personal library with automated book data retrieval.

Features

• Automated Data Fetching - Automatically retrieves book details like author, description, page count, cover image and more using Google Books API
• Dual Search Mode - Add books by entering 10/13 digits ISBN, the title of the book or manually filling in the details
• Duplicate Prevention - Checks if a book already exists in the library based on a unique combination of the title and the ISBN
• Responsive UI - Styled with Bootstrap for a clean and modern look

Technologies

• Backend: Python & Django 5.0+
• Frontend: Bootstrap & Django Template Engine
• Database: PostgreSQL 15
• APIs: Google Books API
• Containerization: Docker & Docker Compose

Warning

This project is configured primarily for development use.

• The application runs using Django's built-in development server
• The Docker setup is intended for local development and testing
• Production configuration (e.g., Nginx, Gunicorn, etc.) is not included

While the project can be adapted for production use, it is recommended to implement additional security measures and optimizations before deploying it in a production environment.

More on that can be found in the Deployment section below.

Project Structure

├── catalog/                    # Main Django app
│   ├── services.py             # Google Books API integration
│   ├── templates/              # HTML templates
│   ├── tests/                  # Unit tests and intergration tests
│   └── static/                 # The CSS, JS and static images
├── smart_library/              # Project configuration 
├── media/                      # Uploaded book cover images 
├── Dockerfile                  # The dockerfile
├── docker-compose.yaml         # The docker-compose file 
├── requirements.txt            # The Python dependencies 
├── manage.py                   # manage.py by Django 
├── .env.example                # .env template file 
└── README.md                   # The README file 

Getting Started

1. Prerequisites
   • Docker and Docker Compose
   • A Google Books API key

Note

A Google Books API key is required to fetch book details from the Google Books API.
You can use an existing API key if you have one, or create a new one if you don't have it yet.
To create a new API key, you can check here and then do the following:

• Create a new project or use existing one if you have already
• In the project, press on Create credentials and then API key
• Give the API key a name and create it (you can also restrict it to be used only for Books API)
• Go to Enabled APIs & Services on the left, press the Books API and enable it

2. Environment Configuration

   • Create a .env file in the root directory (or delete the .example suffix in the .env.example file) and fill in the following:

     # Django settings
     DEBUG=True
     SECRET_KEY=django-secret-key-here
     ALLOWED_HOSTS=localhost
     
     # Postgres settings
     DB_NAME=db-name
     DB_USER=db-user
     DB_PASSWORD=db-password
     DB_HOST=db
     DB_PORT=5432
     
     DATABASE_URL=postgres://db-user:db-password@db:5432/db-name
     
     # Google Books API key 
     GOOGLE_BOOKS_API_KEY=Google-Books-API-key
     
     

Tip

For a minimal setup, you only need to update GOOGLE_BOOKS_API_KEY.
If you're only planning on adding books manually, you can also ignore that as well. The only required field for adding a book manually is the title of the book.

3. Run with Docker

• If this is the first time you are running the project:
  • Run docker-compose up --build to build the image
  • Run docker-compose exec web python manage.py migratein order to set up the DB
• For every other time:
  • Run docker-compose up

The app will be accessible at localhost:8000 in the browser.

Deployment

As mentioned above, this project is configured primarily for development use.
However, it uses a single setting.py file that dynamically adjusts its configuration based on the environment variables, so it can be easily adapted for production with the following deployment setup:

• Hosting - Render Web Service
• Database - Render PostgreSQL
• Static Files - Served via Whitenoise
• Media Files - Stored and Served via AWS S3
• WSGI Server - Gunicorn

With that being said, that is by no means the only way to deploy the project, and you can choose any hosting provider and deployment setup that suits your needs.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details