CAST Story Studio

CAST Story Studio is a full-stack application for story generation and management. The project uses a modern Django REST API backend with a React TypeScript frontend.

Architecture

• Backend: Django REST Framework with PostgreSQL database
• Frontend: React with TypeScript
• Authentication: JWT tokens with HTTP-only cookies
• Task Queue: Celery with Redis broker for async operations
• AI Integration: OpenAI API for story and description generation

Prerequisites

• Python 3.12.3 with conda
• Node.js 20.12.2 with npm
• PostgreSQL database
• Redis server (for Celery tasks)

Development Setup

Quick Start with Docker Compose

1. Set up environment variables:

   It will probably be much easier to just reach out to me (Emily) for the dev .env file, so feel free to do that.

   Otherwise,

   Create a .env file in the project root with:

   DJANGO_SECRET_KEY=your-secret-key
   DJANGO_DEBUG=True
   POSTGRES_DB=cast-db
   POSTGRES_USER=your_postgres_user
   POSTGRES_PASSWORD=your_postgres_password
   POSTGRES_HOST=your_postgres_host
   POSTGRES_PORT=your_postgres_port
   DATA_PATH=/data/CAST_ext/users
   OPENAI_API_KEY=your-openai-api-key
   FRONTEND_URL=http://localhost
   EMAIL_HOST_USER=your-email@gmail.com
   EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD=your-app-password

2. First-time setup (run migrations before starting services):

   First, examine the services in the docker-compose.dev.yml file. Some services like backend and celery have dockerfile: Dockerfile.arm. If you don't have an ARM-based processor, you can change this to dockerfile: Dockerfile.

   Next, we'll want to generate the migrations locally, so that they can be copied to the backend container at runtime:

   cd backend
   python manage.py makemigrations
   cd ..

   Now we can push the migrations to the postgres database in the docker container:

   # Start only the database and redis first
   docker-compose -f docker-compose.dev.yml up -d db redis
   
   # Run migrations (backend will start temporarily just for this)
   docker-compose -f docker-compose.dev.yml run --rm backend sh -c "python manage.py makemigrations && python manage.py migrate"
   
   # Now start all services
   docker-compose -f docker-compose.dev.yml up --build

3. Subsequent takedown/startups (after initial setup):

   # To take all services down
   docker-compose -f docker-compose.dev.yml down
   
   # To bring all services up
   docker-compose -f docker-compose.dev.yml up

4. Run additional migrations (only needed when changes are made to a models.py file):

   # Ensure services are running before executing this command
   docker exec cast-backend-dev sh -c "python manage.py makemigrations && python manage.py migrate"

5. Create superuser (optional):

   # Being a super-user will allow you to access the admin page at localhost/admin
   docker exec -it backend python manage.py createsuperuser

Key Features

• Image Upload & Management: Upload and organize visual data stories
• AI-Powered Descriptions: Generate descriptions for images using OpenAI
• Story Generation: Create narratives from visual data with AI assistance
• Drag & Drop Interface: Interactive storyboard for organizing content
• User Authentication: Secure JWT-based authentication system
• Async Task Processing: Long-running tasks handled via Celery

Deployment

For production deployment, ensure:

1. Set DJANGO_DEBUG=False in environment
2. Configure proper PostgreSQL database
3. Set up Redis for Celery tasks
4. Use a process manager like tmux or systemd
5. Configure reverse proxy (nginx) for static files

Troubleshooting

Docker Compose Issues

• Run docker-compose -f docker-compose.dev.yml down and docker-compose -f docker-compose.dev.yml up --build to rebuild containers
• Check container logs: docker-compose -f docker-compose.dev.yml logs [service-name]
• Ensure Docker daemon is running
• Verify .env file exists in project root

General Issues

• Check that PostgreSQL and Redis services are running (handled by Docker Compose)
• Verify environment variables are set correctly in .env file
• Ensure ports 8076 (backend) and 8050 (frontend) are available
• Check Celery worker is running for AI generation tasks
• For email functionality, ensure EMAIL_HOST_USER and EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD are configured