1. Setup of Local PostgreSQL Database
   • 1. Install PostgreSQL
   • 2. Create the Database
   • 3. Configure Django
   • 4. Set Environment Variables
   • 5. Apply Migrations
   • 6. Verify Database Tables
2. Set up a Test User on Local Replate Database (before OAuth)
3. OCR Tesseract Setup

Follow these steps to set up a local PostgreSQL database for the Django project.

Make sure you have PostgreSQL installed on your system.

Create a PostgreSQL user if you haven’t already:

    CREATE ROLE <YOUR_PSQL_USER> WITH LOGIN CREATEDB PASSWORD 'yourpassword';

Enter the psql shell:

    psql postgres

Then create the database:

    CREATE DATABASE replate OWNER <YOUR_PSQL_USER>;

Open settings.py and add the following:

    DATABASES = {
        'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.postgresql',
        'HOST': os.getenv('LOCAL_DB_HOST', 'localhost'),
        'NAME': os.getenv('LOCAL_DB_NAME', 'replate'),
        'USER': os.getenv('LOCAL_DB_USER'),
        'PASSWORD': os.getenv('LOCAL_DB_PASSWORD'),
        'PORT': os.getenv('LOCAL_DB_PORT', '5432'),
        }
    }

In your backend .env file (or .env.local), add the following values:

    LOCAL_DB_HOST=localhost
    LOCAL_DB_NAME=replate
    LOCAL_DB_USER=<YOUR_PSQL_USER>
    LOCAL_DB_PASSWORD=<YOUR_PASSWORD>
    LOCAL_DB_PORT=5432

IMPORTANT: Replace <YOUR_PSQL_USER> and <YOUR_PASSWORD> with your PostgreSQL credentials. Make sure .env is NOT committed to Git to keep passwords safe.

Make sure you've pulled the latest models.py from origin/main first!

Navigate to the Django project root (e.g., /backend) and run:

    python manage.py migrate            # apply migrations to your PostgreSQL database

Connect to your database:

    psql -U <YOUR_PSQL_USER> -d replate

If the prompt shows replate=#, you are in the correct database.

List all tables:

    \dt

Type \q to exit the psql shell.

Setup complete! Your local PostgreSQL database is now ready and connected.

For local testing before implementing OAuth, you can create a test user with the provided script:

Script location: backend/api/utils/create_test_user.py

Run this script to create the test user.

This will create a test user with:

username: test
password: 123

You can verify that the API is working by making a simple GET request to list inventory items of the test user:

curl -u test:123 http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/items/

You should get a JSON response (an empty list [] if no items exist yet)

This confirms that your local Django backend and test user are set up correctly.

The OCR functionality requires both the Tesseract executable and the Python wrapper pytesseract.

1. Install Tesseract

macOS (using Homebrew):

brew install tesseract

Ubuntu/Debian:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install tesseract-ocr

Windows: Download the installer from Tesseract at UB Mannheim and add the installation directory to your PATH.

Verify installation:

tesseract --version

2. Install Python Wrapper

Inside your activated virtual environment, install pytesseract (already stated in requirements.txt):

pip install -r requirements.txt

3. Test OCR Endpoint

After setting up Tesseract, you can test the OCR upload endpoint with a sample image:

curl -u test:123 -X POST http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/ocr/scan/ \
  -F "image=/path/to/expiry_label.jpg"

Expected response: JSON containing the detected date(s) and any extracted text.