SF-FoodTruck-Django

Overview

This project is an example of a food truck locator for the city of San Francisco. It allows a user to insert coordinates (latitude and longitude) within a limited range of San Francisco and returns a list of the five nearest active food trucks. The active food trucks are loaded from a publicly available spreadsheet, which contains information about each food truck (name, type of food, coordinates, etc.). Only a small subset of the publicly available information on each truck is actually used.

Implementation

The food truck locator was developed with the following tools/frameworks:

• Django
• PostgresQL
• JavaScript
• HTML
• Bootstrap The application was developed to include a GUI-based web interface and an open api (no API keys needed) that returns food truck data in JSON format

Usage

Requirements

Python 3.7.4

Installation

• Clone this repository
• Navigate to the food_truck_locator directory
• Create a virtual environment
• At the command line, run the command pip install requirements.txt to install the needed software components. The list of components includes several items not needed specifically for this app because I did not develop it in a virtual environment.

Running the app

To run the app locally, navigate to the food_truck_locator directory containing the file manage.py and type the command: python manage.py runserver. The path to the development server will show up at the prompt. Open a web browser and type in this path in the search bar. This should take you to the app home page, which lists all active food trucks alongside a couple of searchboxes.

Finding a food truck

Type in coordinate values for longitude and latitude, then click 'Find nearest food truck'. A page will be generated showing the 5 nearest food trucks to the location specified by the entered coordinates. If coordinates that are out of range are entered, a pop-up box will appear describing the range of allowed latitude and/or longitude inputs.

Using the API

A JSON response listing the five nearest food trucks to any location can be found by entering the following path in a browser's search bar when the app is run locally: http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/latitude/longitude/number_of_results_to_return. For example, the command http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/37.780/-122.41/6 returns a JSON response with data for the 6 nearest restaurants to the location with latitude 37.780 and longitude -122.41.

Try out the app without installing it

This app has been deployed using Heroku and can be accessed at:

• https://sf-ft-nudoyen.herokuapp.com/ (GUI interface)
• https://sf-ft-nudoyen.herokuapp.com/api/latitude/longitude/number_of_results_to_return (API) eg., https://sf-ft-nudoyen.herokuapp.com/api/37.780/-122.41/6

System administrator functions

System admin dashboard

To access the system administrator dashboard:

• Navigate to the food_truck_locator directory containing the file manage.py
• Run the command python manage.py runscript createsuperuser. Enter a username, email and password when prompted
• Log in to the admin dashboard at: http://127.0.0.1:8000/admin. Database entries can be created, updated and deleted here.

Loading updated food truck data

The data used by the app is read from a csv file installed with the app. This will need to be refresshed routinely. To update food truck data:

• Download the updated food truck data from the endpoint with the csv dump at: https://github.com/timfpark/take-home-engineering-challenge
• Copy the downloaded data file Mobile_Food_Facility_Permit.csv to the folder food_truck_locator/locatorApp
• Navigate to the food_truck_locator directory containing the file manage.py
• Run the command python manage.py runscript load_vendor_data. This will delete existing data in the app's food truck database, and upload the new data to the app.