Django E-commerce API

📖 Table of Contents

• About the Project
• ✨ Core Features
• 🛠️ Technology Stack
• 🗂️ Project Structure
• 📊 Database Schema (ERD)
• 🚀 API Endpoints
• 🔧 Getting Started
  • Prerequisites
  • Installation
• ⚙️ Environment Variables
• ▶️ Running the Application

📝 About the Project

This project is a full-featured, multi-vendor e-commerce RESTful API built with Django and Django REST Framework. It provides a robust backend system that allows registered users to become sellers, manage their products (which require admin approval), while buyers can browse products, manage a shopping cart, place orders, and provide reviews.

The architecture is designed to be scalable, secure, and maintainable, following best practices for modern web API development.

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✨ Core Features

• User Management & Authentication: Secure user registration and login.
• Multi-Vendor System: Users can register as sellers and manage their own product listings.
• Product Management: Complete CRUD operations for products, including image uploads.
• Admin Approval System: Products submitted by sellers must be approved by an admin before they become visible to buyers.
• Category & Filtering: Products are organized by categories, with advanced filtering options.
• Shopping Cart: Persistent shopping cart for each authenticated user.
• Order Management: A complete system for placing and tracking orders.
• Reviews & Ratings: Users can leave reviews and ratings for products they have purchased.
• Search Functionality: Flexible product search by name or category.
• Pagination: Efficiently handles large datasets for product listings and search results.

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🛠️ Technology Stack

• Backend: Python 3.12
• Framework: Django
• API: Django REST Framework (DRF)
• Authentication: DRF Token Authentication (built-in).
• Database: PostgreSQL / MySQL / SQLite 3 (Configurable)
• Static Files: WhiteNoise

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🗂️ Project Structure

The project is organized into modular Django apps for better separation of concerns:

• ecommerce_api/: Main project configuration directory.
• users/: Handles user registration, authentication, and profiles (template-based).
• products/: Manages product details, listings, and seller associations.
• categories/: Manages product categories.
• orders/: Handles order creation, status tracking, and order items.
• payments/: Handles payment processing integrations.
• reviews/: Manages user reviews and ratings for products.
• media/: Stores user-uploaded files like product images.

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📊 Database Schema (ERD)

The database is designed to support the complex relationships in an e-commerce platform. The key entities include Users, Products, Categories, Orders, OrderItems, and Reviews.

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🚀 API Endpoints

Here is a summary of the available API endpoints based on the current project structure.

Method	Endpoint	Description	Auth Required
Products
GET	/products/api/	Get a list of all products.	No
POST	/products/api/	Create a new product.	Yes (Seller)
GET	/products/api/{slug}/	Get details of a specific product.	No
PUT / PATCH	/products/api/{slug}/	Update a product.	Yes (Seller)
DELETE	/products/api/{slug}/	Delete a product.	Yes (Seller)
Categories
GET	/categories/api/	Get a list of all categories.	No
POST	/categories/api/	Create a new category.	Yes (Admin/Seller)
GET	/categories/api/{slug}/	Get details of a specific category.	No
PUT / PATCH	/categories/api/{slug}/	Update a category.	Yes (Admin/Seller)
DELETE	/categories/api/{slug}/	Delete a category.	Yes (Admin/Seller)
Reviews
GET	/reviews/api/	Get all reviews for a product.	No
POST	/reviews/api/	Create a new review.	Yes (Customer)
GET	/reviews/api/{id}/	Get details of a specific review.	No
PUT / PATCH	/reviews/api/{id}/	Update a review.	Yes (Customer)
DELETE	/reviews/api/{id}/	Delete a review.	Yes (Customer)
Orders
GET	/orders/api/	Get a list of the user's orders.	Yes (Customer)
POST	/orders/api/	Create a new order.	Yes (Customer)
GET	/orders/api/{id}/	Get details of a specific order.	Yes (Customer)
PUT / PATCH	/orders/api/{id}/	Update a specific order.	Yes (Customer)
DELETE	/orders/api/{id}/	Cancel/Delete an order.	Yes (Customer)

Note: The project also includes several template-based URLs for rendering HTML pages (e.g., /register/, /login/, /products/, /categories/, /my-orders/). The table above focuses exclusively on the RESTful API endpoints that handle JSON data.

curl -X DELETE http://127.0.0.1:8000/products/api/laptop-pro/
-H "Authorization: Token YOUR_SELLER_AUTH_TOKEN"

curl -X DELETE http://127.0.0.1:8000/categories/api/electronics/
-H "Authorization: Token YOUR_ADMIN_AUTH_TOKEN"

⚠️ Important Notes & Fixes

• Categories: The API path is /categories/api/. To activate it, you must uncomment the line path("api/", include(api_router.urls)), in your categories/urls.py file.
• Orders: The Orders API endpoints have been removed from this table as they do not exist in your provided orders/urls.py file. That file only contains template-based views.
• Reviews: The Reviews API endpoints have been added as they exist in your project structure but were missing from the original table. The correct path is /reviews/api/reviews/.

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🔧 Getting Started

Follow these instructions to get a copy of the project up and running on your local machine for development and testing purposes.

Prerequisites

• Python (3.10 or higher)
• pip (Python package installer)
• Git

Installation

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone [https://github.com/your-username/your-repo-name.git](https://github.com/your-username/your-repo-name.git)
   cd your-repo-name

2. Create and activate a virtual environment:

   # For Linux/macOS
   python3 -m venv venv
   source venv/bin/activate
   
   # For Windows
   python -m venv venv
   .\venv\Scripts\activate

3. Install the required dependencies:

   pip install -r requirements.txt

4. Set up environment variables: Create a .env file in the root directory. It is recommended to copy from a .env.example file if one exists. See the Environment Variables section below for required keys.

5. Apply database migrations:

   python manage.py migrate

6. Create a superuser to access the admin panel:

   python manage.py createsuperuser

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⚙️ Environment Variables

To run this project, you will need to add the following environment variables to your .env file:

# .env file

# Django Settings
SECRET_KEY='your-secret-key'
DEBUG=True

# Database Settings (Example for MySQL/PostgreSQL)
DB_ENGINE=django.db.backends.mysql
DB_NAME=your_db_name
DB_USER=your_db_user
DB_PASSWORD=your_db_password
DB_HOST=localhost
DB_PORT=3306