GlobeTrotter – Travel Assistant

GlobeTrotter is a monolithic Flask application that serves as the starting point for a semester-long capstone project.
Students build the monolith first, then refactor it into microservices, and finally deploy it to the cloud with resilience patterns using Docker, Kubernetes, and cloud-native tooling.

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Project Structure

.
├── app/
│   ├── __init__.py         # Flask app factory
│   ├── models.py           # Data models and JSON file I/O
│   ├── auth.py             # Registration, login, JWT handling
│   ├── destinations.py     # Destination search endpoint
│   ├── recommendations.py  # Personalised recommendations endpoint
│   ├── itineraries.py      # Create / list itineraries
│   └── main.py             # App entry point
├── data/
│   ├── destinations.json   # Static destination catalogue (seed data)
│   ├── users.json          # Created at runtime
│   └── itineraries.json    # Created at runtime
├── tests/                  # Placeholder for future tests
├── Dockerfile
├── docker-compose.yml
├── requirements.txt
└── README.md

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REST API

Method	Endpoint	Auth required	Description
POST	/register	No	Register a new user
POST	/login	No	Authenticate and receive a JWT token
GET	/destinations	No	Search the destination catalogue
GET	/recommendations	Yes (JWT)	Get personalised recommendations
POST	/itineraries	Yes (JWT)	Create a new itinerary
GET	/itineraries	Yes (JWT)	List all itineraries for the logged-in user

Protected routes expect the header:
Authorization: Bearer <your-token>

Example requests

# Register
curl -X POST http://localhost:5000/register \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"username": "alice", "password": "s3cr3t", "preferences": ["beach", "food"]}'

# Login
curl -X POST http://localhost:5000/login \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"username": "alice", "password": "s3cr3t"}'
# Save the returned token: TOKEN=<value from .token field>

# Search destinations
curl "http://localhost:5000/destinations?tag=beach&max_cost=100"

# Personalised recommendations
curl http://localhost:5000/recommendations \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN"

# Create an itinerary
curl -X POST http://localhost:5000/itineraries \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
  -d '{"title": "Beach Escape", "destinations": ["Bali"], "start_date": "2025-07-01", "end_date": "2025-07-14"}'

# List itineraries
curl http://localhost:5000/itineraries \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN"

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Running Locally

Prerequisites

• Python 3.9+
• pip

# 1. Install dependencies
pip install -r requirements.txt

# 2. Start the server
python app/main.py

The API will be available at http://localhost:5000.

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Running with Docker

# Build and start
docker-compose up --build

# Stop
docker-compose down

The data/ directory is mounted into the container, so JSON files persist between runs.

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Data Storage

All data is persisted in plain JSON files inside the data/ directory:

File	Purpose
data/destinations.json	Static catalogue of travel destinations (seed data)
data/users.json	Registered users (created at runtime)
data/itineraries.json	User itineraries (created at runtime)

Note: data/*.json (except destinations.json) are excluded from version control via .gitignore.

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Configuration

Environment Variable	Default	Description
SECRET_KEY	globetrotter-secret-change-in-prod	JWT signing key – must be overridden in production
FLASK_DEBUG	0	Set to 1 to enable Flask debug mode (development only)
PORT	5000	Port the app listens on

Important: Always set SECRET_KEY to a long, random value in production (e.g. python -c "import secrets; print(secrets.token_hex(32))").