VaxPlus - REST API for a Vaccination Management System

VaxPlus is a secure and scalable RESTful API built using Django and Django REST Framework. This system allows users to register, book vaccination slots, view vaccine details, and manage appointments efficiently. It also includes admin-level capabilities to manage vaccine centers, doses, and more.

---

🌐 Live Deployment

• 🔗 Base URL – https://vaxplus-backend.vercel.app/api/v1/auth/
• 🔗 API Root – https://vaxplus-backend.vercel.app/api/v1/

Infrastructure:

Layer	Provider
Backend hosting	Vercel (serverless, Python 3.11)
Database	Supabase (managed PostgreSQL)
Cache	Upstash Redis (production) / Docker Redis (local dev)
Media storage	Cloudinary
Payments	SSLCommerz
Email	SMTP (Djoser activation flow)

---

🚀 Key Features

• JWT Authentication – Secure, token-based login and access management
• Email Activation – Automatic account activation via email upon registration
• Role-Based Access – Patient / Doctor / Admin permissions across all endpoints
• User Management – Register, log in, and manage user profiles
• Doctor Applications – Apply as a doctor with certificate upload; admin approval workflow
• Campaign Management – Full CRUD operations for vaccination campaigns
• Vaccination Centers – Create, update, and manage vaccine center details
• Booking System – Book, reschedule, or cancel vaccination appointments
• Vaccination Records – Auto-generated history once a booking is marked completed
• Campaign Reviews – Ratings & comments, restricted to patients who booked/completed a campaign
• Payment Integration (SSLCommerz) – Secure online payments for vaccination booking
• Admin Panel – Manage users, vaccine info, and appointment data
• Advanced Filters – Filter campaigns by category, date, status, and more
• Search & Ordering – Search by campaign or vaccine title and description; order by date or relevance
• API Documentation – Integrated Swagger and ReDoc for easy API exploration

---

📈 Performance Optimizations

• Reduced repeated API response latency by 82% (2.51s → 0.45s) using Redis (Upstash) response caching with version-based cache invalidation.
• Reduced Campaign List API database queries by 62.5% (8 → 3) using Django ORM optimization (select_related(), prefetch_related(), Prefetch()).
• Minimized database overhead by retrieving only required fields with Django's only() QuerySet optimization.
• Improved API scalability with pagination, filtering, searching, and ordering support.

---

🛠️ Technologies Used

• Backend: Django 5.2.1, Django REST Framework 3.16.0
• Authentication: JWT (SimpleJWT), Djoser
• Caching: django-redis, Upstash Redis (prod), Docker Redis w/ ACL (local)
• Database: PostgreSQL via Supabase
• Docs: drf-yasg (Swagger/ReDoc)
• Image Handling: Pillow
• Filtering: django-filter
• Payment Gateway: SSLCommerz
• Dependencies: See requirements.txt

---

📚 API Documentation

• 🔍 Swagger UI – https://vaxplus-backend.vercel.app/swagger/
• 📘 ReDoc UI – https://vaxplus-backend.vercel.app/redoc/

---

🔧 Installation & Local Setup

1. Clone the repository

   git clone https://github.com/anis191/vaxplus-backend.git
    cd vaxplus-backend

2. Create & activate virtual environment

   python -m venv .example_env
   # For Windows
   source .example_env/Scripts/activate
   # For macOS/Linux
   source .example_env/bin/activate

3. Install dependencies

   pip install -r requirements.txt

4. Configure environment variables Create a .env file in the project root:

   # Database (Supabase Postgres or local Postgres)
   dbname=your_db_name
   user=your_db_user
   password=your_db_password
   host=your_db_host
   port=5432
   
   # Redis (must match the ACL user/password set in redis.conf)
   REDIS_URL=redis://djangoapp:your_local_password@localhost:6379/0
   
   # Cloudinary
   cloud_name=your_cloud_name
   cloudinary_api_key=your_key
   api_secret=your_secret
   
   # Email
   EMAIL_HOST=smtp.example.com
   EMAIL_PORT=587
   EMAIL_USE_TLS=True
   EMAIL_HOST_USER=your_email
   EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD=your_app_password
   
   # Djoser frontend URLs
   FRONTEND_PROTOCOL=http
   FRONTEND_DOMAIN=localhost:5173
   FRONTEND_URL=http://localhost:5173
   BACKEND_URL=http://127.0.0.1:8000
   
   # SSLCommerz
   STORE_ID=your_store_id
   STORE_PASS=your_store_pass
   IS_SANDBOX=True

5. Run migrations

   python manage.py migrate

6. Start development server

   python manage.py runserver

• API Access: http://127.0.0.1:8000/ (Localhost only)
• Redis check: docker exec -it <container_name> redis-cli -u redis://djangoapp:your_password@localhost:6379 PING → should return PONG

🔐 Authentication

This API uses JWT (JSON Web Tokens) for secure, stateless user authentication.

📌 Endpoints

Base URL: http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/v1 (Localhost)

🔑 Endpoints

Method	Endpoint	Description
POST	/auth/jwt/create/	Login – Obtain access & refresh tokens
POST	/auth/jwt/refresh/	Refresh access token
POST	/auth/users/	Register a new user (Sign up) ✅

💡 Note: After registration, use the /auth/jwt/create/ endpoint to log in and receive your JWT tokens.

💳 Payment Integration (SSLCommerz)

Payments are required only for premium vaccination campaigns.

📌 Payment Flow

1. User selects a premium vaccination campaign.
2. At checkout, the system redirects to the SSLCommerz hosted payment page.
3. Upon successful payment, SSLCommerz notifies the system via IPN (Instant Payment Notification).
4. The campaign booking is confirmed and marked as Paid.

📂 Project Structure

vaxplus-backend/
 ├── vaxplus/ – Django settings & core configuration
 │ ├── __init__.py
 │ ├── settings.py
 │ ├── urls.py
 │ └── wsgi.py
 │
 ├── api/ – API root and endpoint routing
 │ └── (views, urls, models)
 │
 ├── booking/ – Vaccination booking management
 │ └── (models, views, serializers)
 │
 ├── campaigns/ – Vaccine campaigns, categories, vaccines, and centers
 │ └── (models, views, serializers)
 │
 ├── core/ – Shared utilities (Redis caching, decorators, cache helpers)
 │ └── (cache.py, decorators.py, etc.)
 │
 ├── payments/ – SSLCommerz payment integration and payment management
 │ └── (models, views, serializers)
 │
 ├── users/ – Custom user authentication, profiles, and roles
 │ └── (models, views, serializers, urls)
 │
 ├── fixtures/ – Demo/sample data for development
 │ └── campaigns_data.json
 │
 ├── media/ – Uploaded media files
 │
 ├── requirements.txt – Project dependencies
 ├── manage.py – Django management script
 └── README.md – Project documentation

🤝 Contributing

Contributions help make this project better and are always welcome!

How to Contribute

• ⭐ Star the repo
• 🍴 Fork the project
• 📥 Clone your fork
• 💡 Create a feature branch: git checkout -b feature/awesome-feature
• ✅ Commit your changes: git commit -m 'Add some feature'
• 📤 Push your branch: git push origin feature/awesome-feature
• 🛠️ Open a Pull Request

Ensure your code follows the project standards and passes all tests.

---

💻 Author

Anisul Alam
Full-Stack Developer | Django | React | PostgreSQL

---