Digital Home Library

Created by Réka Gábosi

Table of Contents

• Description
• Features
• Project Files Overview
• Database Design
• Installation
• Design Choices
• Testing
• Acknowledgments
• Demo

Description

Digital Home Library is made in Python, it's a graphical user interface program, designed to help users to manage all the books they own at home. The program allows users to add, update, delete and search books within an SQLite database, it also tracks whether the user have read/ unread a book and which page are they at, if they haven't finished reading a book.

The interface is built using the Tkinter library, making it more user-friendly.

Features

User Interface

Graphical User Interface: built with Tkinter, using buttons and entry fields.

Book Management

• Search Books: Find books with their title or author.

• Add Books: To add books to the database, with entering the title of the book, the author, the status in which the book is, if it's read or unread and the page count.

• Update Books: To update the status and the page count of a book. It's important to enter the title and the author, so that the program knows which book are we updating.

• Delete Books: To delete a book from the database, by entering their title and author.

Project Files Overview

• main.py - The main program, which runs the Digital Home Library.
• images/ - Contains both the images for the GUI, README, and the demo video.
• library.db - SQLite database which stores books; it is generated on the first run.
• requirements.txt - A file listing the dependencies required to run the application.
• README.md - Project documentation.
• LICENSE - The license file for the project (CC BY-ND 4.0).

Database Design

Scope

The database is designed to efficiently store and manage all the books the user will add to the database.

Functional Requirements

• Stores essential book details.
• Allows easy modification and retrieval for any book.

Representation

The SQLite database has a single table named books with the following schema:

• id: which specifies the unique ID for each book as an INTEGER. This will be the PRIMARY KEY.
• title: which specifies the title of the book as TEXT.
• author: which specifies the author of the book as TEXT.
• status: which specifies whether the book is read or unread as TEXT. A check will ensure that no other value is entered here other then read and unread.
• pages: which specifies the page count of the book.

All columns in the books table are required and hence they should have the NOT NULL constraint applied. For pages I wasn't sure if I should require it, but I think it's nice for people to look back on how many pages they have read.

Installation

Prerequisites

• Ensure you have Python installed (version 3.x recommended).
• Library installed with:

Option 1: Install Pillow library manually

pip install pillow

Option 2: Install all dependencies from requirements.txt

pip install -r requirements.txt

Running the Application

1. Clone this repository or download the files.
2. Run the application by entering in the terminal the following:

python main.py

Design Choices

Modularity

Each function is made to handle specific tasks, like adding, updating, deleting and searching books. Like this the code is more readable.

SQLite for Data Storage

SQLite was chosen for its easy integration with Python and easy usage. It handles data efficiently without requiring an external database.

Tkinter for GUI

Tkinter is a simple built-in solution for creating graphical applications in Python. Making the project more user-friendly.

Testing

Manual testing was conducted by interacting with the GUI to verify all features, including adding, updating, searching, and deleting books.

Acknowledgments

• This project was created as a final project for Harvard University's CS50’s Introduction to Computer Science online course.
• Additional skills and knowledge were gained through completing:
  • CS50’s Introduction to Programming with Python
  • CS50’s Introduction to Databases with SQL
• Special thanks to Codemy.com YouTube Channel for providing excellent tutorials on Tkinter GUI development.

Demo

Check out the demo of how the Digital Home Library works:

View Demo Video