DevClub Summer of Code 2023

Backend Development

Why learn this?

Backend development encompasses the creation and maintenance of the server-side components that power web applications. It involves designing, developing, and managing the logic, databases, and infrastructure required to handle data processing, user authentication, business logic, and integrations. Backend developers work with programming languages like Python, Ruby, Java, or Node.js to build robust APIs, implement server-side functionalities, and ensure smooth communication between the frontend and backend. They focus on performance, security, and scalability, enabling the seamless functioning of web applications and delivering a reliable and efficient user experience.

What we'll be building?

This year the theme for DevClub Summer of Code is e-commerce! We'll be building an e-commerce website from scratch. For the website, we will have a frontend and a backend. The frontend will be built using React and the backend will be built using Django. We'll be using Django REST Framework to build the API for our website. We'll be using PostgreSQL as our database.

Timeline

Week 1

Concepts

• Introduction
  • What backend development entails.
  • Overview of the server-side architecture and its role in web applications.
  • Comparison with frontend development and understanding the need for both.
• Networking
  • Showing how various websites communicate with backend using browser developer tools.
  • Various components of a HTTP request, like headers, body, etc.
  • Cookies, authentication, session and tokens
• Database
  • Databases and their importance in web applications.
  • Overview of different types of databases (relational, NoSQL, etc.).
  • Structured Query Language (SQL) and its usage for data manipulation.
• APIs
  • Definition and significance of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).
  • RESTful APIs and their role in client-server communication.
  • Overview of HTTP methods (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE) and their purpose.
  • API endpoints, request/response formats, and status codes.
• Running a simple HTTP Server in Python
  • Overview of the HTTP protocol and its role in web communication.
  • Python's built-in http.server module for running an HTTP server.
  • Demonstration of how to write a simple Python script to start an HTTP server.
  • Testing the server and accessing it through a web browser.

Resources

• DevClub's Introduction to Backend Engineering: This is an introductory video which discusses why we need a backend and the basic concepts in real world.
• Google Chrome Developer's Inspect Network Activity - Chrome DevTools 101 A nice tutorial on how to analyse webpages using the Chrome DevTools by the Google team themselves!
• Mozilla's HTTP Status Codes
• Mozilla's HTTP Headers
• CloudFlare's HTTP Cookies
• JSON Web Tokens: Try to find where JWTs are used in day-to-day activities and authorization requests, and see what content they store
• Python's http.server: You can use this packe to make a simple backend server, which takes a request with data like URL and body, and returns reponse of headers and content
• Python's sqlite3: You can use this python package to interact with a sqlite3 database
• ngrok: You can use this to forward your localhost port to the web for everyone to see!
• Postman: You can use this to write about APIs you've written or found, and share or use them conveniently later

Task

Learn how a backend works by analysing a real-world website, and then make your own backend, using raw Python & SQL and use it to create a simple URL shortener