Scientific Articles Search Engine

Contribution guidelines

- create a branch for each section

- branches will follow the naming convention <member name>/<feature or section name>

    example: mina/authentication

- try to provide meaningfull commit messages

    example: added an api route for user credentials

- open a Pull Request after finishing a section or feature

!!! NEVER PUSH TO MAIN OR AUTOMATICALLY MERGE YOUR BRANCH TO MAIN, EVEN IF YOUR BRANCH CAN BE AUTOMATICALLY MERGED !!!

Description

This project is a web application designed to search scientific articles using a set of keywords

Table of Contents

1. Technologies
2. Folder Structure
3. Installation

Technologies

Frontend:

1. ReactJS JavaScript framework
2. TailwindCSS for styling
3. GSAP (Green Socket Animation Platform) for animations

Backend:

1. Django python library
2. SQLite relational database management system (RDBMS)

SQLite:

SQLite is a self-contained, serverless, and zero-configuration relational database management system (RDBMS). It's an excellent choice for embedded systems and applications that don't require a separate database server. SQLite is the default database engine used by SQLAlchemy in this project.

Learn more about SQLite

Folder Structure

Backend

folders:

• name: server content:

  • name: backend description: Django project root content:

    • name: backend description: Django project configuration content:
      • name: init.py
      • name: asgi.py
      • name: settings.py # Django project settings
      • name: urls.py # Project-level URL configuration
      • name: wsgi.py
    • name: backendapp description: Django app for your main functionality content:
      • name: migrations content:
        • ...
      • name: init.py
      • name: admin.py
      • name: apps.py
      • name: models.py # Define your Django models here
      • name: tests.py # Write tests for your app
      • name: views.py # Define your views here
      • ...

  • name: manage.py # Django project management script

  • name: db.sqlite3 # Database with dummy data

• name: README.md # Project README file

Frontend:

• client/frontend
  • name: .gitignore (this is for not pushing the node_modules)
  • public/
    • fonts/
    • images/
  • src/
    • components/ (folders of React components, each page has a separate folder)
    • pages/ (all the pages of the website)
    • styles/ (contains global styling where raw CSS is required, use TailwindCSS otherwise)
  • App.js (this is where all pages will be called and where routes are handled)

Installation

Frontend

• If you don't have Node.js installed, navigate to (https://nodejs.org/en) and download the latest stable version (LTS) then install it.

• Navigate to the frontend folder cd client/frontend

• Run the command npm install

• Start the development server by running npm start

• CTRL + Click the link displayed in the terminal to view the local development server.

Backend

• If you don't have Python installed, navigate to (https://www.python.org/downloads/) and download the last release then install it.
• Navigate to the backend folder cd server/backend

Elasticsearch Setup:

• Download and install Elasticsearch from elastic.co.
• go to elasticsearch/config/elascticsearch.yml and change xpath.security.enable to false
• Start Elasticsearch service by clicking on bin/elasticsearch.bat in the elastic search folder
• Install Django by typing the command pip install Django
• install elascticsearch lib by typing the command pip install elasticsearch-dsl elasticsearch
• Start the django server by running python manage.py runserver

Starting the database

• Open a terminal and make sure you are at the backend folder
• Start a python shell by typing python
• Inside the python shell, enter the following 2 commands

  from app import app, db

  with app.app_context():
    db.create_all()

  this will create an SQLite database file with the specified name in config.py containing all the database tables defined in models