E‑Commerce (Django)

A simple yet production-ready e‑commerce website built with Django. Features product listings, categories, authentication, a shopping cart (add/update/delete), and static file handling optimized for deployment.

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📉 Live Demo

• Site: Live Demo
• Admin: Admin Page
• Example Credentials (demo): user@example.com / password123

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🔍 About This Project

This project was built to practice and demonstrate:

• Django ORM for product & category management
• User authentication and session handling
• Cart functionality with add/update/delete
• Serving and optimizing static assets with WhiteNoise
• Deploying a Django app to Render with a production-ready configuration

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💡 Features

• Product catalog and categories
• User authentication (register, login, logout)
• Shopping cart with quantity update and item removal
• Responsive Bootstrap UI
• Static asset pipeline via WhiteNoise
• SQLite (dev) / DATABASE_URL (prod)

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🛠️ Tech Stack

• Backend: Django 5
• Database: SQLite (dev), PostgreSQL (prod via DATABASE_URL)
• Static Files: WhiteNoise
• Production Server: Gunicorn

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📂 Project Structure

ecom/
  cart/                    # cart logic, views, urls, templates
  store/                   # products, categories, auth, templates
  static/                  # css, js, images (product images live here)
  media/                   # reserved for uploads
  ecom/                    # project settings, urls, wsgi
  manage.py
  requirements.txt
  Procfile
  build.sh
  runtime.txt

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📸 Static & Media

• Static collected to staticfiles/ in production.
• Product images in static/images/products/.
• Template tag store/templatetags/product_images.py maps product names to filenames.

Example mappings:

• "Atomic Habits" → images/products/Atomic_Habits.jpg
• "iPhone" → images/products/iphone.jpg

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🚀 Quickstart (Local)

Prerequisites: Python 3.11+

# 1. Clone repository
git clone https://github.com/shivamr021/e-commerce.git
cd e-commerce

# 2. Create virtual environment (Windows)
python -m venv .venv
.\.venv\Scripts\Activate.ps1

# or macOS/Linux
python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate

# 3. Install dependencies
pip install --upgrade pip
pip install -r requirements.txt

# 4. Apply migrations
python manage.py migrate

# 5. Collect static files (optional for dev)
python manage.py collectstatic --no-input

# 6. Create superuser
python manage.py createsuperuser

# 7. Run server
python manage.py runserver

Visit:

• Site: http://127.0.0.1:8000/
• Admin: http://127.0.0.1:8000/admin/

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🔐 Environment Variables

• SECRET_KEY (required in prod)
• DEBUG (True/False)
• ALLOWED_HOSTS (comma-separated)
• DATABASE_URL (optional)

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🔧 Settings Highlights

• STATIC_URL = '/static/'
• STATIC_ROOT = BASE_DIR / 'staticfiles'
• STATICFILES_DIRS = [ BASE_DIR / 'static' ]
• MEDIA_URL = '/media/'
• MEDIA_ROOT = BASE_DIR / 'media'
• WhiteNoise Middleware & Storage for production

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📦 Deployment (Render)

1. Connect repo to Render and create a Web Service

2. Build Command: ./build.sh

3. Start Command: gunicorn ecom.wsgi:application

4. Set environment variables:

   • SECRET_KEY
   • DEBUG=False
   • ALLOWED_HOSTS=.render.com,<your-service>.onrender.com

Notes:

• Free tier sleeps after inactivity
• Ephemeral DB unless using a managed database

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🛒 Cart Behavior

• Session-based cart
• Add/update/delete items
• Quantity updates on cart page

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🛡️ Troubleshooting

• 400 Bad Request: Check ALLOWED_HOSTS
• Static files 404: Run collectstatic & verify WhiteNoise settings
• Images missing: Check file naming and product_images.py
• Invalid credentials in prod: SQLite resets on deployment; recreate superuser or use managed DB

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📋 License

No license specified.

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📚 Repository

GitHub Repo