Transitioning to a Unified Blog Model for Campus Website

[Rontim]

Currently, our campus blogging website operates with two distinct blog models. While this setup might have seemed feasible initially, it's becoming increasingly apparent that maintaining two separate models is inefficient and counterproductive. As we've encountered various issues and setbacks recently, it's time to reevaluate our approach and streamline our blog structure for improved functionality and manageability.

Proposal:

I propose we transition to a unified blog model for our campus website. Consolidating our blogging system into a single model offers several advantages, including:

1. Simplified maintenance
2. Enhanced Scalability

[Rontim]

This is my proposal:

class Blog(models.Model):
    AUTHOR_TYPE_CHOICES = (
        ('user', 'User'),
        ('club', 'Club'),
    )

    title = models.CharField(max_length=200)
    slug = models.SlugField(max_length=200, unique=True, null=True, blank=True)
    thumbnail = models.ImageField(upload_to='blog/thumbnails/', null=True, blank=True)
    content = models.TextField()
    updated_at = models.DateTimeField(auto_now=True)
    created_at = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)
    author_type = models.CharField(max_length=20, choices=AUTHOR_TYPE_CHOICES, default='user')
    author_user = models.ForeignKey(User, on_delete=models.CASCADE, related_name='user_blogs', null=True, blank=True)
    author_club = models.ForeignKey(Club, on_delete=models.CASCADE, related_name='club_blogs', null=True, blank=True)
    topics = models.ManyToManyField(Topic, related_name='blogs', blank=True)

    class Meta:
        verbose_name_plural = 'Blogs'

    def save(self, *args, **kwargs):
        self.slug = slugify(self.title)
        super().save(*args, **kwargs)

    def __str__(self):
        return self.title

• The author_type field indicates whether the author of the blog is a user or a club.
• Depending on the value of author_type, either author_user or author_club will be used to link the blog to its respective author.
• Both author_user and author_club are nullable and blankable, so only one of them will be used based on the value of author_type.
• The topics field remains common to both user and club-authored blogs.
• The save method is overridden to generate a slug for the blog title.
• The str method is overridden to return the title of the blog for better representation in admin panels and elsewhere.

[Rontim]

Request data sample:

{
  "title": "Test Blog3",
  "author_type": "user",
  "author": "val",
  "content": {
    "time": 264062375715,
    "blocks": [
      {
      "id": "hsgvdy265",
      "type": "header",
      "data": {
        "text": "Test Blog3",
        "level": 1
        }
      },
      {
      "id": "hsgvdy265",
      "type": "paragraph",
      "data": {
        "text": "Some content"
        }
      }
    ]
  },
  "topics": [
    {"topic_name": "Health and Wellness"},
    {"topic_name": "Relationships and Dating"}
    ]
}

[Rontim]

Response after calling /api/v1/blog/create:

{
  "id": 12,
  "title": "Test Blog3",
  "slug": "test-blog3",
  "author_type": "user",
  "author_user": "val",
  "author_club": null,
  "thumbnail": null,
  "content": {
    "time": 264062375715,
    "blocks": [
      {
        "id": "hsgvdy265",
        "type": "header",
        "data": {
          "text": "Test Blog3",
          "level": 1
        }
      },
      {
        "id": "hsgvdy265",
        "type": "paragraph",
        "data": {
          "text": "Some content"
        }
      }
    ]
  },
  "topics": [
    {
      "id": 3,
      "slug": "health-and-wellness",
      "topic_name": "Health and Wellness"
    },
    {
      "id": 10,
      "slug": "relationships-and-dating",
      "topic_name": "Relationships and Dating"
    }
  ],
  "updated_at": "2024-03-07T06:10:19.480236Z",
  "created_at": "2024-03-07T06:10:19.480291Z"
}