National Dialog SA

National Dialog SA is a Streamlit-based public feedback and community insight platform for collecting, displaying, and reviewing responses from users across South Africa.

The app combines business-oriented survey forms, a public blog-style response feed, advertising cards, and a sidebar poll experience into a single lightweight Python application.

Developed by Thapelo Kgothatso Thooe, a Python developer from Pretoria, South Africa.

Overview

This project was built to gather structured feedback in a simple, visual format. Users can:

• register with their details before accessing the app
• complete multiple business and community-oriented forms
• submit retail, banking, public service, tourism, and customer behavior feedback
• view published responses in a blog-style public feed
• browse custom ad cards between public posts
• see detailed retail poll data in the sidebar
• access tourism links from custom-styled sidebar buttons

Main features

User access

• simple access form with validation for name, phone number, and email
• local storage of user access records in JSON and CSV format

Business-oriented feedback forms

• Retail & Consumer Insights
• Public Service Delivery
• Customer Spending Behaviour
• Tourism & Hospitality Experience
• Banking & Financial Services

Public blog feed

• every successful submission is saved and displayed in a public blog section
• blog posts use custom animated cards
• posts can include uploaded images or short videos

Advertising support

• ad submission form for sponsored content
• image and video ads are rendered as custom horizontal cards
• ads are interleaved with blog content

Sidebar poll

• detailed retail poll cards show full saved submission information
• supports legacy poll records and richer data from current submissions

UI enhancements

• light Streamlit theme
• custom sidebar tourism buttons
• animated success notification cards after form submissions

Tech stack

• Python
• Streamlit
• Pandas
• Local JSON / CSV storage
• Custom HTML/CSS components rendered inside Streamlit

Project structure

National_Dialog/
├── national_dialog_app.py
├── requirements.txt
├── README.md
├── .streamlit/config.toml
└── user_data_store/

Data storage

The app stores data locally inside user_data_store/:

• blog.json — public form submissions
• polls.json — retail poll data
• users.json / users.csv — access/user records
• media/ — uploaded blog and ad files

Getting started

1. Clone the repository

git clone <your-repository-url>
cd National_Dialog

2. Create and activate a virtual environment

python -m venv .venv
.venv\Scripts\activate

3. Install dependencies

pip install -r requirements.txt

4. Run the app

streamlit run national_dialog_app.py

Usage notes

• the app is designed for local JSON-based persistence
• uploaded media is stored locally on disk
• sidebar poll cards are generated from retail submission data
• blog cards, ad cards, and notifications use embedded custom HTML/CSS

Recommended future improvements

• move storage from JSON files to a database
• add admin moderation tools
• add analytics dashboards for form responses
• separate runtime user data from version-controlled sample data
• deploy the app to Streamlit Community Cloud or another hosting platform

Developer credit

Thapelo Kgothatso Thooe
Python Developer
Pretoria, South Africa
GitHub: ybadk