Online Trading Platform

Overview

This repository contains a full-stack web application that simulates an online equities trading experience. The backend is built with Django and the Django REST Framework, while the frontend is a React single-page application styled with Material-UI and powered by Redux state management. The platform lets users authenticate, explore market data, visualise interactive stock charts, follow company fundamentals and news, and manage a simulated trading portfolio including cash movements.

Financial market data is aggregated from multiple third-party providers. Historical charts, quotes, and financial statements are requested from the IEX Cloud API through custom client helpers (src/iexAPI/iex.js and src/iexAPI/iexCloud.js), company profiles are fetched from Financial Modeling Prep, and market headlines are sourced from NewsAPI. These feeds are refreshed periodically to keep the dashboard up to date (Title.js, SetChart.js, and SetNews.js).

Purpose

• This is my 1st big project to develop a full stack app by myself.
• It will be an online trading platform mainly for equities.
• Charts visualization and creation of personal portfolios will be the first end goal.
• Implement machine learning to analyze stocks will be my 2nd end goal, this will be done in the near future when I have the time.

Architecture

• Backend (backend/)
  • Django project configured in trading_platform/settings.py with Django REST Framework, Knox token authentication, CORS handling, and SQLite (development) / PostgreSQL (production) database support.
  • REST APIs exposed via routers in portfolio/urls.py and funds/urls.py, and authentication endpoints in accounts/urls.py.
  • Portfolio transactions and cash movements are stored in the Portfolio and Funds models (portfolio/models.py, funds/models.py). Knox tokens secure user sessions (accounts/api.py).
• Frontend (frontend/trading_platform/)
  • React application bootstrapped with Create React App (src/index.js, src/App.js).
  • Global state handled by Redux (src/redux/store.js) with feature-specific reducers for authentication, market data, news, profile, trades, and funds.
  • UI built with Material-UI components and custom visualisations using react-stockcharts and D3 (src/components/graphs/).

Key Features

• Authentication & Session Management – Users can register, log in, and manage sessions backed by Knox tokens (accounts/api.py, authAction.js). Modal dialogs in the navbar provide quick access to signup and login flows (SubMenuSection.js, Login.js, Signup.js).
• Symbol Search & Navigation – An asynchronous multi-select search bar pulls the full IEX symbol directory and drives the active context for charts, stats, and news (Navbar/SearchBar.js, iexAction.js). Navigation drawers (Navbar/MainMenu.js) and tabs (Navbar/Tab.js) organise access to dashboard sections.
• Market Data Dashboard – The dashboard combines real-time quotes, intraday price updates, and configurable historical charts with multiple visualisations (candlestick, Heikin Ashi, area) and range selectors (SetChart.js, ChartSelect.js, CandleStickChart.js, HeikinAshiChart.js, AreaChart.js). Quotes refresh every five seconds while a trade dialog remains readily accessible (Title.js, portfolio/Trade.js).
• Fundamentals & Financial Statements – Detailed company profiles, advanced statistics, key metrics, and multi-period financial statements are retrieved from external APIs and rendered in responsive tables (CompanyProfile.js, FinancialStatements.js). Users can toggle between annual and quarterly data as well as different statement types.
• News Integration – Market headlines related to the selected symbol are streamed from NewsAPI and presented with imagery, attribution, and publication timestamps (news/SetNews.js, news/News.js).
• Portfolio & Funds Management – Authenticated users can execute simulated buy/sell trades, automatically adjusting their cash balance (portfolio/Trade.js). Transaction and fund histories are persisted via REST endpoints and displayed with sortable tables and expandable dialogs (PortfolioHistory.js, FundsHistory.js, profile/SetTradeHistory.js, profile/SetFundsHistory.js).
• Profile Management – Users can review and update their username, email, and password, as well as deposit additional funds through modal forms with validation and error feedback (profile/SetUsername.js, profile/UpdateData.js, profile/UpdatePassword.js, profile/FundInput.js).

Data Providers & Environment Variables

Configure the following environment variables before running the project:

Variable	Purpose	Where it is used
stock_trading_platform_django	Django secret key	backend/trading_platform/settings.py
DEBUG_VALUE	Enables Django debug mode when set to True	backend/trading_platform/settings.py
my_email1, my_email_password1	SMTP credentials for password reset emails	backend/trading_platform/settings.py
REACT_APP_DB	Base URL of the backend API	frontend/trading_platform/src/redux/utility.js
REACT_APP_iexToken	IEX Cloud API token (use sandbox for development)	frontend/trading_platform/src/iexAPI/iexCloud.js
REACT_APP_newsAPI	NewsAPI key	frontend/trading_platform/src/redux/actions/newsAction.js

Optional: configure DATABASE_URL for PostgreSQL via dj_database_url when deploying.

How to make this work

• Get your own Django secret key
  • Create your own Django app => copy the secret key => paste into this project's secret key location at settings.py or in your environment.

    # Use python 3 to generate your own Django secret key
    import secrets
    print(secrets.token_hex(24))
    

• Create your own mysql database
  • Change the username, password, and database name at settings.py
• API key is required if you want to use data from IEX cloud.
  • Create free account with IEX at https://iexcloud.io/.
  • Real data is free data but limited. However, simulated data is completely free.
    • If using simulated data, paste the following with the api key in the environment

      export REACT_APP_iexToken="api_key"

• API key is required to get real news feed from news api
  • Create account for free at https://newsapi.org/

    export REACT_APP_newsAPI="api_key"

• Add local server address to environment or manually edit in the utility.js file

  export REACT_APP_DB="http://127.0.0.1:8000"

• Company profile data is taken from https://financialmodelingprep.com
  • no additional settings required

Project Structure

├── backend/
│   ├── accounts/          # Authentication APIs and serializers
│   ├── funds/             # Cash ledger REST endpoints
│   ├── portfolio/         # Trade history REST endpoints
│   └── trading_platform/  # Django project settings and root URLs
├── frontend/
│   └── trading_platform/
│       ├── src/
│       │   ├── components/   # Navbar, charts, news, portfolio, profile UI
│       │   ├── pages/        # Dashboard, Chart, Company, Financials, Profile views
│       │   ├── redux/        # Store, actions, reducers, utilities
│       │   └── iexAPI/       # REST client helpers for IEX endpoints
│       └── package.json
├── images/               # Demo assets
└── Pipfile               # Python dependencies

Backend Setup

1. Install dependencies

   pipenv install
   

2. Activate the virtual environment

   pipenv shell
   

3. Apply database migrations

   python manage.py migrate
   

4. (Optional) create a superuser for Django admin access:

   python manage.py createsuperuser
   

Running the backend

python manage.py runserver

The server defaults to http://127.0.0.1:8000/. REST endpoints include:

• POST /api/auth/register – register a new user (accounts/api.py)
• POST /api/auth/login – obtain a Knox token (accounts/api.py)
• GET /api/auth/user – retrieve the authenticated user profile (accounts/api.py)
• PUT /api/auth/user – update username or email (accounts/api.py)
• PUT /api/auth/user/password/change – change password (accounts/api.py)
• GET/POST /api/portfolio/ – list or create trades (portfolio/api.py)
• DELETE /api/portfolio/<id>/ – remove a trade record (portfolio/api.py)
• GET/POST /api/funds/ – list or create fund ledger entries (funds/api.py)
• DELETE /api/funds/<id>/ – remove a fund entry (funds/api.py)
• POST /api/auth/logout – invalidate the active Knox token (accounts/urls.py)

Knox expects the Authorization: Bearer <token> header on authenticated requests.

Frontend Setup

1. Install Node dependencies:

   cd frontend/trading_platform
   npm install
   

2. Start the development server:

   npm start
   

   The React app runs on http://localhost:3000/ and proxies API calls to the backend address provided by REACT_APP_DB.

Available npm scripts

• npm start – start the development server.
• npm run build – build the production bundle.
• npm test – run tests configured by Create React App.

Available npm scripts

• npm start – start the development server.
• npm run build – build the production bundle.
• npm test – run tests configured by Create React App.

Development Notes

• Authentication state, market data, and user data are persisted in Redux reducers (authReducer.js, iexReducer.js, userReducer.js, etc.), with side effects handled via thunk actions (redux/actions/).
• Intraday polling and chart range management are encapsulated in SetChart.js, which keeps the chart responsive to user selections and streaming data.
• The profile view refreshes user data after mutations to keep the UI in sync with backend responses (Profile.js).
• Initial fund balances are automatically seeded once a user authenticates (SubMenuSection.js).

Additional Resources

• IEX Cloud API Documentation: https://iexcloud.io/docs/api/
• Financial Modeling Prep API: https://financialmodelingprep.com/developer
• NewsAPI Documentation: https://newsapi.org/docs

List of major technologies used

• Django
• React
• D3
• MySql changed to sqlite for development, and Postgres for production
• Django Rest Framework
• Redux
• Material-UI

List of Things to do

• Build a restful api with Django
• Start a simple template with React
• Use MySql as database
• Integrate MySql with Django
• Integrate React with Django
• Made a basic user authentication feature
• Style with Material-UI
• Integrate d3 with React
• Write my own iex api to get financial data from IEX
• Integrate iex api with d3
• Write my own iex cloud api to get financial market and stocks data from IEX cloud
• Integrate iex cloud api with d3
• Slightly improved d3 charts
• Reorganize Navbar into separate components
• Implement Search Bar and enable multi search feature
• Implement Async Select and Search in large database
• Link Nav search bar with chart display
• Add range select for chart
• Implement Candle Stick chart
• Fix X ticks
• Implement Menu bar
• Add news to Dashboard
• Add Company Profile to Dashboard
• Add Advanced Stats to Dashboard
• Add Key Stats, Balance Sheet, Cash Flow, Income Statement to Dashboard
• Add other features and links into Menu (news, etc.)
• Reorganize Dashboard and split into different pages
• Add Loading feature
• Add portfolio frontend and backend feature
• Add buy and sell stock feature
• Improve trade UI
• Add real time price update for trade UI
• Add real time price and change update for Dashboard UI
• Add Profile feature
• Add privacy for portfolio and profile
• ~~Add token expiry feature (auto logout or exte