College Placement Portal

The College Placement Portal is a web-based platform designed to streamline and automate the campus recruitment and placement process. It acts as a central hub connecting college administrators (superadmins), students, and recruiters. The system handles job postings, student profile registration, job applications, student invitations, and automated email notifications.

• Dual Roles: Dedicated dashboards for college administration (superadmin) and students.
• Student Invitation & Authentication: Superadmins can invite students to register. The system generates secure random passwords and notifies students via automated emails.
• Profile Management: Students can build structured profiles, complete with education history, skills, languages, and certificates.
• Job Board: Superadmins can create and manage full-time, part-time, contract, or internship job listings. Students can view job listings and apply.
• Application Tracking: Seamless flow from job application to acceptance or rejection, with automatic email notifications sent to students when decisions are made.
• Helpdesk AI Chatbot: Built-in placement helpdesk chat leveraging TF-IDF and NLTK to answer student queries regarding placement events, policies, and preparation.

Below is the sequence graph of the core workflow (student invitation, onboarding, and job application):

sequenceDiagram
    actor Admin as Superadmin
    actor Student
    participant DB as System Database
    participant Mail as Celery & SMTP

    Admin->>DB: Create Student Account
    DB-->>Mail: Trigger Email Invitation Task
    Mail-->>Student: Send Email with Temp Password
    Student->>Student: Login & Reset Password
    Student->>DB: Complete Profile (Education, Skills, Certificates)
    Admin->>DB: Post Job Openings
    Student->>DB: Apply for Job
    Admin->>DB: Accept/Reject Application
    DB-->>Mail: Trigger Status Update Email
    Mail-->>Student: Receive Application Decision Email

The application follows a traditional Model-View-Template (MVT) architecture powered by Django, with a background task processing layer powered by Celery & RabbitMQ.

graph TD
    Client[Web Browser]
    Django[Django Application]
    SQLite[(SQLite Database)]
    Celery[Celery Worker]
    RabbitMQ[RabbitMQ Broker]
    Redis[Redis Cache]
    
    Client -->|HTTP Requests| Django
    Django -->|Queries/Updates| SQLite
    Django -->|Cache Reads/Writes| Redis
    Django -->|Enqueue Mail Task| RabbitMQ
    RabbitMQ -->|Consume Task| Celery
    Celery -->|Send Email| SMTP[SMTP Server]

• CollagePlacementPortal/ - Main Django project configuration, settings, routing, wsgi/asgi entry points, and custom middleware.
• authentication/ - User authentication logic, login/logout, password reset, and forms.
• collage/ - Superadmin features (student management, job creation, application reviews, and helpdesk backend).
• student/ - Student portal features (profile setup, job listings view, job applications).
• main/ - Shared models, serializers, and asynchronous Celery tasks.
• templates/ - Global HTML templates.
• static/ - CSS, JS, images, and external libraries.
• media/ - User-uploaded files and media resources.

• Backend: Django 4.1.7, Django REST Framework (DRF)
• Frontend: HTML5, Vanilla CSS, Bootstrap 4/5
• Database: SQLite3 (Default development)
• Caching: Redis
• Task Queue: Celery, RabbitMQ
• AI/NLP: NLTK, Scikit-learn (TF-IDF vectorization for the Helpdesk Chatbot)

The application relies on environment variables for database, email server (SMTP), and security configurations. Make sure to define these in a .env file inside the project root (refer to .env.example).

1. Clone the Repository:

   git clone https://github.com/harshidkoladara/collage-placement-portal.git
   cd collage-placement-portal

2. Set up Virtual Environment:

   python -m venv .venv
   # Windows:
   .venv\Scripts\activate
   # macOS/Linux:
   source .venv/bin/activate

3. Install Dependencies:

   pip install -r requirements.txt

4. Configure Environment Variables: Copy .env.example to CollagePlacementPortal/.env and edit with your settings:

   cp .env.example CollagePlacementPortal/.env

5. Run Migrations & Start Server:

   python manage.py migrate
   python manage.py runserver

To run the complete system (including Redis, RabbitMQ, and Celery workers) easily:

1. Build and Run Containers:

   docker-compose up --build

2. Access the App: The web portal will be running at http://localhost:8000/.

The application features a self-documenting API using Swagger / OpenAPI:

• Interactive Swagger UI: http://localhost:8000/swagger/ (if enabled in routes)

• GET /api/utils/label: Fetch UI localization labels. Accepts optional date_time query param.

• Run Django Check: python manage.py check
• Create Migrations: python manage.py makemigrations
• Apply Migrations: python manage.py migrate
• Create Superuser: python manage.py createsuperuser

• NLTK Blocked Import Error: If you see ImportError: Blocked import of regex from current working directory, ensure you set NLTK_DISABLE_IMPORT_SECURITY=1 in your .env file or environment.
• Celery Connection Failures: Ensure RabbitMQ is running (docker-compose up rabbitmq or check your local rabbitmq status).