created: 2024-12-03 06:23 tags: - daily-notes

Tuesday, December 03, 2024

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🎯 Goal

• [x] Establish a new BookNook App to track progress of books I'm reading

🌟 Results

• Created the BookNook App to help me track my different books

🌱 Next Time

• Move the BigBrain App to be within the apps directory of the DIMMiN App

📝 Notes

I wanted to use the Taskmaster App to track the progress of my reading list, but that ended up being too much of a hassle. Therefore, I decided to create a new Django App to cover books that I'm reading to help me track my reading list. This could also be a great time to try out my new app structure where I place applications I use in apps/app_name directories so that they don't start to clutter my primary app.

I created the app by first creating the apps directory, then adding a blank __init__.py so that Django would treat the apps like a Python Package. Then I created the Django App using

python manage.py startapp booknook apps/booknook

which created my new BookNook App.

Then I just needed to add my BookNook App to my INSTALLED_APPS list in my config/settings.py file.

I did have to change my apps/booknook/apps.py file's Config to have the name field of apps.booknook. After this change was made I was in the clear for creating my Database Migrations:

python manage.py makemigrations
python manage.py migrate

I then adjusted the Django Models so that it would be easier to add / configure the different components. Namely, I wanted to filter the books I could select for the BookProgress model to only books I'm actively reading (flagged by the is_active boolean):

class BookProgress(models.Model):
    user = models.ForeignKey(settings.AUTH_USER_MODEL, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
    book = models.ForeignKey(
        "Book",
        on_delete=models.CASCADE,
        related_name="progress",
        limit_choices_to={"is_active": True},  # Only show books with is_active=True
    )
    current_page = models.IntegerField(null=False, blank=False)
    recap = CKEditor5Field(config_name="default")
    created_at = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)
    updated_at = models.DateTimeField(auto_now=True)

    def __str__(self):
        return f"{self.user.username} - Update for - {self.book.title}"

I've also added the following:

class ReadingList(models.Model):
    pass

A ReadingList will consist of a collection of Books (like a Playlist is a collection of songs). I may extend this further later on to allow a readinglist to be developed into a Syllabus or ReadingSchedule so that a user can take a list of books, see the total number of pages or sections or chapters, and see how long it may take them to complete that reading list, maybe calculated via a rate of reading from the past.

I made a few more adjustments before I decided to send it in and push changes to Production. Overall the BookNook App is now live.

I had to apply Database Migrations on the Production side with

heroku run bash -a dimmin
python manage.py migrate

Now the BookNook App is live and ready for updates.

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