Interestify

Interestify is an amazing web application that brings you a personalized browsing experience for articles. It leverages web scraping techniques to collect articles from popular sources like Springer, allowing you to explore a vast library of knowledge based on your interests. With Interestify, you can discover, bookmark, and read articles tailored specifically to your preferences.

project-1-highlight.mp4

Features

• Browse articles by category
• Sort articles by popularity (most liked, recent, hot)
• Bookmark articles for later reference
• View your browsing history
• Like articles to show appreciation
• Subscribe to a weekly mail service for curated articles

How Interestify Works

During the signup process, users are asked to specify their category preferences. A "BROWSES" relationship is then established between the user and the chosen category in the database. Initially, all categories are given equal preferences, which are also stored in the database along with the relationship. When a user visits the front page, a request is sent to the backend to retrieve articles, and the articles displayed are based on the user's preferences. Categories with higher priority will have a greater number of displayed blogs. After a user reads an article, the priority of all categories is updated. The update function takes into account the decay rate of an article. If a user previously browsed a category but has recently stopped browsing it, the blogs from that category will appear less frequently in their feed.

For email services, we utilize the smtplib library and a thread scheduler to ensure that emails are sent out every week at the scheduled time. To generate similar articles, we use sklearn library. In addition, we are utilizing Redis as a caching mechanism for storing the cache of similar articles. This allows us to efficiently retrieve and serve similar articles based on cosine similarity calculations.

Interest-Based Browsing

Interestify takes personalized browsing to the next level by offering interest-based recommendations. The application analyzes your browsing history, likes, and bookmarks to understand your preferences. It then suggests relevant articles based on your interests, ensuring you discover new and engaging content in your areas of interest.

Database showing relationship between User, Category, and Blogs

	Category
	Blog
	User

Technologies Used

• Frontend: Next.js, TypeScript, Chakra UI
• Backend: Flask, Neo4j, scikit-learn, Redis, smtplib, lucene

Prerequisites

To run the Interestify backend, ensure that you have the following:

• Python 3.x
• Node.js

Installation and Setup

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/SahilSingh177/interestify.git

For running server

1. Navigate to the server directory:

   cd interestify/server

2. Install the Python dependencies:

   pip install -r requirements.txt

3. Go to your Google account. Search for "app passwords" and select "mail" as the app and "Windows computer" as the device. Click "generate" to create a password. Copy the generated password for use in your env file as your email password.

4. Create a file named ".env" in the server directory and provide necessary your own API keys and credentials as listed:

    DATABASE_URL=<your_database_url>
    DATABASE_USER=<your_database_username>
    DATABASE_PASSWORD=<your_database_password>
    SENDER_MAIL=<your_sender_email>
    SENDER_PASSWORD=<your_sender_email_password>
    SMTP_SERVER=<your_smtp_server>
    SMTP_PORT=<your_smtp_port>
    COHERE_API_KEY=<your_cohere_api_key>
    REDIS_HOST=<your_redis_host>
    REDIS_PORT=<your_redis_port>
    REDIS_PASSWORD=<your_redis_password>
   

5. Replace the placeholders (e.g., <your_database_url>) with the actual values corresponding to your setup.

6. Start the backend server:

   python main.py
   

For running frontend

1. Navigate to the server directory:

   cd interestify/client

2. Install the Node.js dependencies:

   npm install

3. Create a file named ".env" in the server directory and provide necessary your own API keys and credentials for firebase as listed:

    NEXT_PUBLIC_FIREBASE_API_KEY=<your-api-key>
    NEXT_PUBLIC_FIREBASE_AUTH_DOMAIN=<your-auth-domain>
    NEXT_PUBLIC_FIREBASE_PROJECT_ID=<your-project-id>
    NEXT_PUBLIC_FIREBASE_STORAGE_BUCKET=<your-storage-bucket>
    NEXT_PUBLIC_FIREBASE_MESSAGING_SENDER_ID=<your-messaging-sender-id>
    NEXT_PUBLIC_FIREBASE_APP_ID=<your-app-id>
    NEXT_PUBLIC_FIREBASE_MEASUREMENT_ID=<your-measurement-id>
   

4. Replace the , , , , , , and placeholders with the corresponding values for your Firebase configuration.

5. Run the frontend:

   npm run dev

Note on Hosting

As students, we are unable to purchase expensive hosting plans. Despite this limitation, we have meticulously designed the Interestify platform to provide users with a highly responsive and user-friendly browsing experience. We leverage Vercel for frontend hosting and PythonAnywhere for backend hosting to optimize performance. However, intermittent speed issues may occur due to constraints on the PythonAnywhere Hacker plan, particularly during high traffic periods. We continuously work to improve our code and infrastructure to maintain fast browsing speeds. To experience the platform with minimal latency, we recommend running Interestify locally on your own machine, utilizing its full processing power. Your feedback is invaluable to us as we strive to enhance the platform's performance. Thank you for being part of our journey.

Legal Disclaimer

We extend our gratitude to Springer for their valuable articles. Please note that Interestify is solely intended for educational purposes and not for commercial use. If there are any copyright concerns, kindly contact us, and we will promptly address any issues and remove respective posts.