Collaborative Task Backend

Multi-User Collaborative Backend (Django)

A backend-oriented system exploring object-level authorization, relational modeling, and multi-user domain design.

This project focuses on reasoning about who can see, modify, and delete what in a collaborative environment.

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System Motivation

Many collaborative systems appear simple at the interface level but become complex when enforcing:

• Visibility rules
• Ownership semantics
• Multi-entity assignment
• Hierarchical relationships
• Consistent permission enforcement

This project models those challenges explicitly.

Tech Stack

Layer	Technology
Language	Python 3.x
Framework	Django 5.x
Database	SQLite (dev) / PostgreSQL (prod-ready)
UI	Bootstrap (server-rendered templates)

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Core Technical Challenges

• Designing object-level visibility rules across:
  • Public tasks
  • Direct user assignments
  • Team-based propagation
• Modeling directed subtask graphs using self-referencing relations
• Separating authentication from business logic
• Enforcing permissions without hidden abstractions
• Maintaining relational integrity via lifecycle signals

The emphasis is correctness and reasoning — not UI complexity.

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Architectural Decisions

App Separation:

users/ → Authentication & profile domain
tasks/ → Business domain (Task, Team, permission logic)

Key decisions:

• View-level authorization (explicit request boundary control)
• Directed self-referencing ManyToMany for task hierarchies
• Explicit creator vs collaborator distinction
• Minimal use of signals (only lifecycle consistency)
• Server-rendered design (no DRF abstraction layer)

Trade-offs are documented in ARCHITECTURE.md.

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Engineering Focus

This project demonstrates:

• Domain modeling with complex associations
• Object-level access control
• Directed graph modeling in relational databases
• Explicit trade-off reasoning
• Awareness of production concerns (security, scaling, testing)

Documentation

• Architecture
• API Specification
• Data Model
• Permission Model
• Security Review
• Testing Strategy
• Course Context

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Running the Project Locally

1. Clone the project

git clone <repo-url>
cd App-Web-Gestion-De-taches

1. Create a virtual environment
   Each computer must have its own virtual environment (not shared via Git).

Remove-Item -Recurse -Force .\venv
python -m venv venv

3. Activate the virtual environment

# UNIX
source venv/bin/activate

# Windows (PowerShell)
.\venv\bin\Activate.ps1

4. Install dependencies

# Install Django
python -m pip install Django

# Install dependencies (for image handling)
pip install Pillow

5. Run the server

python manage.py runserver

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Authors

• Erkin Tunc BOYA
• Mohamed SAIDANE