Built Simple Stock Trading Web App With IEX Cloud, Python, Flask, SQLite, and AWS Cloud9
How to build a stock trading web app based on the real price from IEX Cloud with Python, Flask, sqlite3, Bootstrap, and AWS Cloud9.
Features
- Portfolio Management
- Register
- Login
- Quote
- Buy
- Sell
- History
Sequence Diagram
Wireframe
Highlights
A smooth App development experience with AWS Cloud 9
I have completed quite a few assignments for my Harvard CS50 in Cloud 9 and I had to admit I was pampered. Compared to all my sweat and tears to set up a Python environment, imported dependencies and configured them in my heybot project, in my $impleTrade all I did was to download the codebase and start coding in browser.
I might consider Cloud 9 for my future projects as it solves a problem of environment differences between app development and app deployment.
Build Front-end with Python, Flask and Bootstrap
Even though this is an interesting challenge, I didn’t like it so much. Since I built all my Front-end with React, Node and TypeScript, with $impleTrade, as one of the project requirements, I needed to use Python and Flask.
Navigating through Flask templates wasn’t hard. The hard part for me was to beautify the interface and interact with DOM components. I appreciated more what I had with React and Tailwind.
Spent a good amount of time working with the database.
The architecture wasn’t complicated because my functions were simple, I messed up a bit while I was structuring my database. I admitted I didn’t think thoroughly.
Among the highlights for this project, I believe working with the database was my favourite. The queries weren’t hard but the approach I learnt from so many times of creating, copying and deleting tables.
I learnt:
- To be more patient to create a schema
- To second-guess my decision on the schema and what fields to keep.
Not to panic when both initial diagram and wireframe changed
I know as a developer, everything in a project can change and we have to deal with it. But I guess I’m still getting used to with it.
So, If you check my app then look at my wireframe and diagram, there are some differences. For example, I planned to have fancy modals whenever I buy or sell a stock. Or I planned to show you a landing page before you are directed to the app. Instead, none of them existed.
However, I loved the fact that through this project and others, I slowly train myself to have agile thinking.
- Always try to get to the MVP fast, then there is time to improve.
- Learn to ask “Is this a MUST or a PLUS features/ components?”
- Learn to notice when I unconsciously go too deep into unnecessary tasks. For example, I spent two days trying to make a nice modal work while it was time-consuming to work with DOM elements using Flask. And that modal can be replaced quickly with just a hide/show
<div>.
A summary table of Errors and Fixes when deploying with Heroku
With this project, I got some new errors with Heroku. Answers from the Stackoverflow were useful but I think they are like bread scrums. I like things to be systematic and organized so I created a table to collect Errors, What they mean, What causes them and Their Fixes.
