This Django web app was created to streamline the data collection and organization for a research pipeline called High Isomorphism Throughput Screening (HITS). The main features of this app are:

• user authentication and account recovery
• PostgreSQL database to store information necessary to keep track of experimental progress
• an image user interface for quickly setting data markers
• integration with AWS s3 for media file storage

Context

I took on this project to improve the existing software, which was a system of Excel spreadsheets and macros that talked to a SQLite database. The main issues were:

• no data validation at the DB level
• concurrency issues from using Excel and SQLite as the main user interface and DB New to Django development, I saw this an opportunity to hone my fullstack development skills.

Challenges

The main challenges of this project were:

• having to design and code the frontend concurrently
• testing of views and models (used Python packages Factory Boy and Coverage)
• having to work with data inputs/outputs from lab equipment + form data validation (especially with file uploads)
• AJAX integration with certain forms (like modals and GUIs)
• user interactions with JavaScript + jQuery