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Our Code Explained

This guide is intended to help developers gain an understanding of how the code in Conreq works together to make a functional application.

Repository File Structure

Path Description
manage.py Django development tool (runs the development web server, initialize the databases, and more.
misc/ Branding, legal documents, and other miscellaneous files
conreq/ Main Django application
conreq/core/ All back-end functionality
conreq/static/ CSS, JavaScript, and Image files
conreq/utils/ Generic functions that may be helpful to use
conreq/settings.py Boot-time configuration and settings
conreq/urls.py HTTP URLs
conreq/asgi.py Websocket URLs
conreq/core/websockets/consumers.py Back-end Websockets
conreq/static/js/client_websockets.js Front-end websockets

Viewport Rendering

Viewport rendering is currently being reassessed. These docs will be updated at a later time.

Modal rendering is currently being reassessed. These docs will be updated at a later time.

HTTP URL Routing

All of the HTTP routing logic will trace back to a views.py file. Within this file we write code render a specific URL address, which is effectively a string containing HTML.

Conreq relies on the Django Framework for HTTP URL routing. Here's a high level example of what occurs when the browser visits a URL.

  1. The browser visits a Conreq web address
  2. Django determines how to handle this URL by comparing the path (let's use the example of /server_settings/) with what is contained in conreq/urls.py
  3. Django looks at conreq/urls.py at notices it points to include("conreq.core.server_settings.urls"). So, this tells Django there is another file that defines this path, and that file is conreq/core/server_settings/urls.py.
  4. Based on the urlpatterns in conreq/core/server_settings/urls.py, Django determines this URL is rendered by a function called views.server_settings.
  5. Django runs this function to renders the HTML (known as a Django View).
  6. The webserver determines how to send this view to the browser based on what was returned by the view (ex. a HttpResponse or JsonResponse)

Websockets

Websockets can be thought of as the server and browser communicating via chat messages. When the page first loads, a connection to a chat room is formed, and chat bubbles can be communicated back and forth between the server and browser.

Chat rooms must exist at a specific URL. The URL they exist at is determined within conreq/asgi.py. In this file, a specific URL is directly linked to a websocket consumer.

A websocket consumer is a Python class with a send/receive function, which typically process json data.

The data format that gets processed is determined based on your consumer's base class. For example AsyncJsonWebsocketConsumer has send_json() and recieve_json() functions for processing JSON messages. Overriding these functions will be where most of your code will be written when working with websockets.

In the situation where the server sends a JSON message via send_json(), it will be processed by the browser's JavaScript websocket client (ex. conreq/static/js/client_websockets.js).

Last update: July 26, 2021