PeerNotes (In Progress)

Repository for a course project of CS4675/CS6675 at Georgia Institute of Technology.

Advisory for Contributors

Contributing to the Codebase

1. Create a new branch:

   git checkout -b <branch-name>
   

2. Make your changes.

3. Use black to format your code: (With virtual environment activated)

   black .
   

4. Make your changes and commit them:

   git add .
   git commit -m "Your commit message"
   

5. Push your changes to the remote repository:

   git push origin <branch-name>
   

6. Create a Pull Request on GitHub.

Getting Started

Frontend (ReactJs)

For our frontend we are using React + Vite + TypeScript!

• React -> JavaScript Framework for creating reactive user interfaces.
• Vite -> Development environment / build tool. Gives us access to features like hot reload, bundling, and plugins.
• TypeScript -> A superset of JavaScript allowing for static types.

Here's how to set up + run the frontend environment:

1. Download and install Node.js v18+ Check your node version:

node -v

2. Clone the repo using Git
3. Install dependencies

cd frontend
npm install

4. Start the development server

npm run dev

5. Visit http://localhost:5173

Backend

Central Server (Django)

This is the backend for the Django project.

Setup

1. Open a new terminal and cd into the backend directory:

   cd backend
   

2. Create a virtual environment:

   python3 -m venv venv
   

3. Activate the virtual environment:

   • For macOS/Linux:

     source venv/bin/activate
     

   • For Windows:

     venv\Scripts\activate
     

4. Install the project dependencies:

   pip install -r requirements.txt
   

Running the Server

To start the Django server, run the following command:

    python3 manage.py runserver

By default, the server will run on http://localhost:8000/.

Admin Panel

In order to access the admin panel, you need to create a superuser. To do this, run the following command:

    python3 manage.py createsuperuser

Then, you can access the admin panel by visiting http://localhost:8000/admin/ and logging in with the superuser credentials.

Intermediate Proxy Service (Flask)

This is the service which runs on the client side and is responsible for handling the peer to peer connections and file transfers along with getting the IPs of the machine. In order to run this, please do the following:

1. Open a new terminal and cd into the file_peer directory:

   cd file_peer
   

2. Make sure that the venv that we used for the backend service is activated

3. Run the flask server using the following command:

   python3 peer_service.py
   

Further Configurations:

• You would need to set up the central server with a domain and change the domain within the client code. (It is currently hardcoded with IP.)
• Make sure all the servers are running within the same network as this solution is featured to be restricted to within a network by design.