To Do App API

This is the API codebase of the To Do App.

Tech Stack

• Python (see .python-version for the current version in use)
• Django and Django REST Framework
• Pytest

How to set up the local development environment

There are two options for setting up and running the development environment locally:

• Python virtual environment (venv)
• Docker container

Python virtual environment

Install Python (check the version in .python-version)

Go to to-do-api/todo_api/ and create the virtual environment, open it and install dependencies:

python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

.venv could be substituted with any path, if you wish to create the virual env elsewhere

Docker container

You need to have Docker installed so that you can run docker commands.

Go to to-do-api/ directory, where the Dockerfile is, build the Docker image, create and run the container, and run the database migrations, with these commands:

docker build -t todo-api .
docker run -d --name todo-api -p 8000:8000 todo-api
docker exec -it todo-api python manage.py migrate

It's also recommended to create the Django super user for accessing the admin dashboard:

docker exec -it todo-api python manage.py createsuperuser

You will be asked to give a username, email (optional) and password (twice). After creating the super user, you can access the Django admin dashboard in https://localhost:8000/admin/login .

All commands you need to run inside the container should be prefixed with:

docker exec -it todo-api

and you can enter inside the container with this command:

docker exec -it todo-api bash

and exit by running exit.

How to run the development environment

If you use VSCode, open a new terminal, and virtual environment should open automatically.

Run this command to start the development server:

python manage.py runserver

To use a regular terminal, go to the root directory of this project, open the virtual environment and start the server:

source .venv/bin/activate
python manage.py runserver

Tests

The project uses Pytest unit tests.

To run the tests, run the following command:

pytest

Database

The project uses a SQLite3 database.

To open it, you need to install SQLite3: see SQLite homepage

Linux installation:

sudo apt install sqlite3

If you have SQLite3 installed, run the dbshell command in the virtual env:

python manage.py dbshell

Some commands to navigate the DB shell:

.tables # view the list of tables
.help # view the help file

Changing the data model

If you make changes to the data models, you must run a database migration to update the database according to those changes:

python manage.py makemigrations # create the migration files based on the code changes
python manage.py migrate # migrate the database to the latest migrations

You can view the current state of the migrations by running this:

python manage.py showmigrations

Deployment Workflow for todo-api (Django, Docker, ECS Fargate)

1. Prepare AWS Environment

Install AWS CLI v2

Create IAM user main-admin with the following permissions policies:

• AdministratorAccess

Create an access key and a secret access key for main-admin.

Configure credentials and set the keys and choose a default region (e.g. us-east-1) to the AWS CLI configuration:

aws configure

Build & Push Docker Image

Replace the <region> and <account_id> with the region of your choice and the account id of the AWS account id.

aws ecr create-repository --repository-name todo-api
aws ecr get-login-password --region <region> | docker login --username AWS --password-stdin <account_id>.dkr.ecr.<region>.amazonaws.com
docker build -t todo-api .
docker tag todo-api:latest <account_id>.dkr.ecr.<region>.amazonaws.com/todo-api:latest
docker push <account_id>.dkr.ecr.<region>.amazonaws.com/todo-api:latest

3. Deploy the CloudFormation Stack

Deploy resources with CloudFormation:

aws cloudformation deploy \
  --profile main-admin \
  --template-file iac.yaml \
  --stack-name todo-api-stack \
  --capabilities CAPABILITY_NAMED_IAM

4. Run Database Migrations (One-Off Task)

Look up the EC2 security group named todo-api-sg and a subnet id and insert them in the placeholders <sg_id> and <subnet_id> below, and then run the command:

aws ecs run-task \
  --cluster todo-api-cluster \
  --launch-type FARGATE \
  --task-definition todo-api-task \
  --network-configuration "awsvpcConfiguration={subnets=[<subnet_id>],securityGroups=[<sg_id>],assignPublicIp=ENABLED}" \
  --overrides '{"containerOverrides":[{"name":"todo-api","command":["python","manage.py","migrate"]}]}'

5. Access the App

Now the task has a public IP through which you can access the admin dashboard:

http://<PUBLIC_IP>:8000/admin/login

Destroy the Deployment

# Delete the CloudFormation Stack
aws cloudformation delete-stack --profile main-admin --stack-name todo-api-stack

# Delete ECR repo
aws ecr delete-repository --profile main-admin --repository todo-api --force