About
Lantern Free Library Online provides a way for users of the Little Free Library® on Lantern Lane in Barrington, RI, to see the current inventory before they visit. Users can also track their donations and share information about books or other topics on the blog. Note: Little Free Library® is a trademark of the Little Free Library non-profit organization, which does not sponsor, authorize or endorse this app.
How It Works
The catalog depends on user input about donations and receipts. When donating, all a user needs to do is click on the "Add a Book" button in the catalog and enter the author and title. The app adds the book to the inventory and uses the author/title information to search a database for additional metadata about the title, such as the publication date and a description of the book. This data may not accurately describe the edition in the library, but users can edit the records for their donations in the profile section if they wish.
When "borrowing" a book, all a user needs to do is click on the "Remove" button on a title in the catalog. This removes the book from the inventory.
Tech Specs
Lantern Free Library Online is a Python Web app on a Flask framework with a Gunicorn server and a SQLAlchemy/Psycopg2 backend. Werkzeug encryption secures user login information. URLLib and Regex facilitate the app's interaction with the Google Books API. On the front end, Flask WTF handles the forms, and Jinja2 templates and Bootstrap 4.0 components (cards, rows, and columns) supplement the HTML5/CSS3. During development, Virtual Studio Code and PGAdmin4 were used to write the code and create the database, respectively.
Contact
Questions, concerns or suggestions? Email