Blogify: Django Blog Scheduler

Overview

Blogify is a Django-based application designed to automate the process of scheduling and publishing blog posts from Airtable to a WordPress site. It uses a cron job to periodically fetch scheduled posts from Airtable and publish them as drafts to WordPress via the REST API. The project includes a test script for manual API testing and demonstrates skills in Django, API integration, task scheduling, and error handling.

Features

Django Backend Core

• Cron Job Scheduling: A custom management command (start_scheduler) uses django-apscheduler to run a cron job that checks Airtable for scheduled posts every minute.
• Airtable Integration: Fetches blog posts from Airtable based on their status (e.g., "Scheduled") and publish date.
• WordPress Integration: Publishes posts as drafts to WordPress using the REST API, including custom meta fields like focus keywords.
• Status Updates: Updates Airtable records with the WordPress post ID and status (e.g., "Published") after successful publishing.
• Error Handling: Implements retry logic for API requests to handle network issues or rate limits.
• Configuration Management: Uses python-decouple to securely store sensitive data (e.g., API keys, WordPress URL) in a .env file.
• Database: Uses SQLite (Django’s default) for lightweight storage of scheduler data.

API Testing

• Manual Testing Script: Includes test_wordpress_api.py to manually test the WordPress API integration by posting a sample blog post.
• Debugging: Logs API responses and errors for easy troubleshooting.

Security

• Sensitive Data Protection: API keys, WordPress credentials, and other sensitive information are stored in a .env file, which is excluded from version control via .gitignore.

Tech Stack

Backend

• Django 5.1.1 (Python 3.12): Web framework for building the application and management commands.
• Models: Uses Django’s ORM for database interactions (e.g., apscheduler tables).
• Management Commands: Custom command (start_scheduler) to run the scheduler.

APIs and Libraries

• Airtable API: Fetches blog post data using the airtable-python-wrapper library.
• WordPress REST API: Publishes blog posts with custom meta fields using the requests library.
• Python Libraries:
  • requests: For making HTTP requests to Airtable and WordPress APIs.
  • python-decouple: For managing environment variables.
  • django-apscheduler: For scheduling the cron job.
  • airtable-python-wrapper: For interacting with the Airtable API.

Database

• SQLite: Django’s default database, used for storing scheduler data.

Setup Instructions

1. Clone the Repository:

   git clone https://github.com/Shiva-Khatter/Blogify.git
   cd Blogify