Photo Server

Release notes

v0.2: Added functionality to upload videos as well as photos. Check the documentation for the appropriate API calls.

v0.1: First version

A simple and reliable Django photo server

Installation instructions

1. Install Django (pip install django) and clone this repository
2. Create a file named secret_settings.py in the django/project directory, and set the variable SECRET_KEY
3. Create a file named debug_settings.py in the django/project directory, and set the variable DEBUG
4. Run ./manage.py syncdb and provide a username and password
5. Run ./manage.py makemigrations and ./manage.py migrate to create the database tables
6. Run python manage.py runserver to run the photo server locally
7. Visit http://localhost:8000/admin/ and login to start creating albums and uploading photos!

Additional documentation

UPDATE: The generated API documentation is now included in this repository. You can view it here.

The photo server API calls are well-documented. To build the documentation will need the Sphinx documentation builder and the sphinxcontrib.httpdomain extension. Install both with the following command: pip install sphinx sphinxcontrib-httpdomain. Now cd into the doc directory and type make html. If the development server is still running, the API documentation can now be accessed at http://localhost:8000/static/doc/html/index.html

Deployment

Deploying the photo server requires a secured, well monitored and publicly accessible host. The photo server can be deployed like any Django app. For detailed instructions, see https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/stable/howto/deployment/ Here are some additional considerations when deploying this (or any other) Django app:

• In a production setting, DO NOT enable debugging. Fortunately, debugging is disabled by default unless explicitly enabled in django/project/debug_settings.py,

• The SQLite database is not suited for production. Edit django/project/settings.py to use a real database like PostgreSQL. More information can be found at https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/stable/ref/settings/#std:setting-DATABASES

• I am personally very fond of deploying Django apps with uwsgi and nginx. This combination is very fast and very easy to configure.