Daily Dose of Cosmos

A simple desktop GUI for the NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) API, made with Tkinter. This is my first hobby project, and I wanted to learn how to create GUI applications where a frontend is connected to backend functionality and HTTP request handling. I started the project to challenge myself and to create something for fun.

Requirements

Python 3.12 or newer is needed to run the app.

Install the project dependencies from the repository root:

pip install -r requirements.txt

Run the app

Start the application from the repository root:

python src/main.py

Development checks

Run the unit tests:

python -m unittest discover -s test

Check that the source and tests compile:

python -m compileall -f src test

Run pylint:

python -m pylint src test

The repository also includes GitHub Actions workflows for unit tests, pylint, CodeQL, and dependency review.

Instructions of use

API key:
For optimal usage of the NASA APOD API, I recommend visiting NASA's website to generate a personal API key. If this is not of interest, NASA provides DEMO_KEY for limited use.

If you use your own API key, it will be stored locally in private/.env, which will be created during run-time. This is ignored by git and stored indefinitely unless deleted manually.

Date:
If no date is entered, the app defaults to the latest APOD date that should be available globally. Dates must use the format YYYY-MM-DD and must be no earlier than 1995-06-16.

Media:
Image APOD entries are displayed in the app. Video APOD entries can be opened in the browser.

Project structure

assets/     Images and app icons
private/    Local API key storage, ignored by git
src/        Application source code
test/       Unit tests

Copyright

My application retrieves content from the NASA APOD API, and rights/credits to images/text lie with NASA or the stated authors.

It is therefore only the code for the project that is licensed under me.