🌦️ Django Weather Application

A fully functional Django-based Weather Application that allows users to search for any city and view real-time weather information using WeatherAPI.
The project follows clean architecture, secure API key handling, and robust exception handling.

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📌 Table of Contents

1. Project Overview
2. Key Features
3. Tech Stack
4. System Architecture
5. Project Structure
6. API Integration
7. Environment Variables (.env)
8. Installation & Setup
9. Exception Handling
10. Frontend UI
11. Security Best Practices
12. Testing Scenarios
13. Future Enhancements
14. Contributing
15. License
16. Author

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🌍 Project Overview

This is a server-side rendered Django web application that fetches real-time weather data based on a user-entered city name.

Users can view:

• 🌡️ Current temperature
• 🌥️ Weather condition
• 💧 Humidity level
• 🌬️ Wind speed
• 🖼️ Weather icon

The application is designed with:

• Clean UI
• Secure API handling
• Graceful failure recovery

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✨ Key Features

• 🔎 Search weather by city name
• 🌡️ Temperature in Celsius
• 🌥️ Condition with icon
• 💧 Humidity percentage
• 🌬️ Wind speed (km/h)
• 🎨 Bootstrap-based UI
• 🔐 Secure API key handling via .env
• ⚠️ Robust exception handling
• 📱 Fully responsive design

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🛠️ Tech Stack

Backend

• Python 3.10+
• Django 4+
• Requests

Frontend

• HTML5
• CSS3
• Bootstrap 5

API

• WeatherAPI (current.json endpoint)

Utilities

• python-dotenv

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🧠 System Architecture

User Browser
   ↓
HTML Form (POST)
   ↓
Django View
   ↓
WeatherAPI (External API)
   ↓
JSON Response
   ↓
Django Template Rendering
   ↓
User Interface

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📂 Project Structure

weather_project/
│
├── manage.py
├── .env
├── .gitignore
│
├── weather_project/
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── settings.py
│   ├── urls.py
│   ├── asgi.py
│   └── wsgi.py
│
├── weather_app/
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── views.py
│   ├── urls.py
│   └── templates/
│       └── index.html
│
└── README.md

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🌐 API Integration

API Used

WeatherAPI – Current Weather Endpoint http://api.weatherapi.com/v1/current.json

Request Parameters

Parameter	Description
key	API key
q	City name
aqi	Air quality (yes/no)

Example Request

?key=API_KEY&q=London&aqi=no

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🔐 Environment Variables (.env)

Why use .env?

• Prevents API key exposure
• Keeps secrets out of GitHub
• Follows industry standards

.env file (Project Root)

WEATHER_API_KEY=your_api_key_here

Load .env in settings.py

from dotenv import load_dotenv
load_dotenv()

📦 Installation & Setup

1️⃣ Clone Repository

git clone https://github.com/your-username/django-weather-app.git
cd django-weather-app

2️⃣ Create Virtual Environment

python -m venv venv

Activate:

Windows:

venv\Scripts\activate

macOS/Linux:

source venv/bin/activate

3️⃣ Install Dependencies

pip install django requests python-dotenv

4️⃣ Apply Migrations

python manage.py migrate

5️⃣ Run Development Server

python manage.py runserver

• Open in browser: http://127.0.0.1:8000/

⚠️ Exception Handling

Scenario	Handling
Invalid city	API error message
No internet	Connection error handled
API timeout	Timeout exception
Invalid API key	HTTP 401 handling
Server error	Graceful fallback
Invalid JSON	KeyError handling

All errors are displayed as user-friendly Bootstrap alerts.

🎨 Frontend UI

• Gradient background
• Card-based weather display
• Bootstrap alerts
• Responsive for mobile & desktop

🔒 Security Best Practices

• API key stored in .env
• .env added to .gitignore
• No hard-coded secrets
• CSRF protection enabled
• Input validation handled

🧪 Testing Scenarios

Test Case	Result
Valid city	Weather displayed
Invalid city	Error message
API down	Graceful failure
Internet off	No crash
First load	Clean UI

🚀 Future Enhancements

• 7-day weather forecast
• Dark mode
• AJAX-based search
• Auto-detect user location
• Docker deployment
• Weather analytics dashboard

🤝 Contributing

• Fork repository
• Create feature branch
• Commit changes
• Open pull request

📜 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.

👨‍💻 Author

Shreyas K G Python | Django | Web Development

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