Overcoming Challenges in Building a Gift Card E-commerce Shop with Django
Published: 2024-06-27 14:09:14

Taking on challenging issues is a necessary part of the journey for a passionate backend developer. As part of a task for school, I recently worked on an e-commerce gift card shop, which raised a number of technological difficulties that stretched my knowledge and abilities. Here's how I overcame them and the lessons I discovered in the process.


The primary challenge was developing a secure payment method for managing numerous transactions, and delivering a custom email message which matches the site’s content, while maintaining user authentication and data consistency were secondary issues.


**Step By Step Solutions**


1. **Understanding the criteria**: Clearly defining the criteria was the first stage. I required a payment system that guaranteed security, supported a wide range of payment methods, and could manage high transaction volumes. I required a user-friendly and safe mechanism for user authentication.

2. **Selecting the Correct Tools**: Because of Paystack's robust security features and extensive API, I choose to use it for processing payments. I decided to use Django's standard authentication mechanism for user authentication. 

3. **Setting Up the Environment**: I made a project for the online store and configured a Django environment. Because of its dependability and robustness when managing relational data, MySQL was selected as the database.

4. **Implementing Payment Processing**: In order to handle payments and guarantee that they were processed securely, views and endpoints had to be created as part of the paystack integration process. In order to update the database in response to payment events, I developed webhooks.


5. **User Authentication with Django**: I created endpoints for user login and registration, protected routes using middleware to validate tokens, and implemented authentication to manage user sessions.


6. **Maintaining Data Consistency**: I used MySQL transactions to ensure data consistency, particularly during concurrent transactions. This minimized the possibility of data corruption by guaranteeing that any database transactions were finished properly before committing the changes.

7. **Sending Custom HTML Emails**: Finding a free custom HTML email websites to use for email delivery was not easy for me, later I used HTML and CSS to design a custom email template in my views.py file then used Django to deliver the emails.



In conclusion, this project made me think back and acquiring Knowledge in addition to improving my technical abilities, finishing this project made me realize how crucial it is to prepare ahead and comprehend the needs before beginning any coding. It was a rewarding experience that made me want to work in backend programming fully.


The internship at HNG I'm excited to get started on my HNG internship career. This is a chance for me to gain knowledge from seasoned developers, solve practical issues, and work on worthwhile projects. The well-organized atmosphere and cooperative culture at HNG are ideal conditions for my professional development as a backend engineer. Visit their [premium services](https://hng.tech/premium) and [internship program](https://hng.tech/internship) for additional details on the HNG Internship.


I've given folks a peek into my approach to problem-solving and my love of backend development by writing this blog post. With the HNG Internship, I'm excited for the challenges and chances of learning that lie ahead.