tedxuwa-server-backend

This repo contains code for the database and server of the TEDxUWA website

Table of Contents

• Getting started
  • Python prerequisite
  • Virtual environment
  • Requirements
  • Database setup
  • Starting the server
• Deployment
  • Folder structure
  • Using deployment script
  • Setting up a new server
    • 1. Installing system dependencies
    • 2. Create folder structure
    • 3. Run deployment script
    • 4. Setup https
    • 5. Load data from existing database?
• Built with
• Notes
• Things to remember

Getting started

The instructions below will help you set up a development environment

Python prerequisite

Download and install python 3.6

Virtual environment

cd into the project folder

$ cd tedxuwa-server-backend

Download virtualenv

$ pip install virtualenv

If you have multiple versions of python installed, please run pip3 instead

A virtual environment ensure everyone working on this project will have the same dependencies installed and avoid the "it worked on my machine" bug. Create a new virtualenv with

$ virtualenv env

If you have multiple versions of python installed, run:

$ virtualenv -p python3.6 env

To activate the virtual environment, run

$ source env/bin/activate

You will need to run this command every time you want to continue working on this repo

Requirements

Installing requirements

$ pip install -r requirements.txt

Database setup

Run migrations

$ python manage.py migrate

Load dummy data

Starting the server

To start up the server, run

$ python manage.py runserver

The server will now be avalaible at localhost:8000. For more server starting options, visit the django docs for the runserver command

Deployment

Folder structure

The folder structure is as follows:

root (~/)
└── website
    ├── back-end
    ├── deploy.sh
    └── front-end

Where back-end is this repo and front-end is our front end repo. This structure is embedded in most of the code (nginx config, deployment script, etc...) so it's a little hard to change.

deploy.sh is a copy of the deploy.sh file in this repo. It's copied out to the website folder so that we don't have to add execute permission to it everytime backend updates. This is the script to be run when you want to deploy either front end or back end code.

Using deployment script

To run the deployment script, run

$ cd ~/website
$ ./deploy.sh

If deploy.sh doesn't have the permission to run, do chmod +x deploy.sh first then try again. If that still doesn't work, open up the file and copy paste the commands inside

NOTE: If you made a change to the deployment script, running ./deploy.sh once will update the deployment script file on the server and running it a second time will make the changes take effect

Setting up a new server

If you are setting up a brand new server, access the server's console and follow these steps: NOTE: before you setup a new server, make sure you have a backup of the db.sqlite3 file from the server available. This IS the database including all the data so copy it out before you delete the old server

1. Installing system dependencies

$ sudo apt-get update
# python and pip
$ sudo apt-get install python3.6-dev
$ sudo apt-get install -y python3-pip
# c compiler for uWSGI
$ sudo apt-get install build-essential
# nginx
$ sudo apt-get install nginx

2. Create folder structure

$ cd ~/
$ mkdir website
$ cd website
$ git clone https://github.com/TEDxUWA/tedxuwa-server-backend.git ./back-end
$ git clone https://github.com/TEDxUWA/tedxuwa-react.git ./front-end

3. Run deployment script

# copy it out to ~/website
$ cp back-end/deploy.sh ./
# add execute permission
$ sudo chmod +x deploy.sh
# run it
$ ./deploy.sh

The server should now be setup and running!

4. Setup https

Certbot can be used to setup https. Head to https://certbot.eff.org/ and select NGINX and the appropriate OS that the new server is running on and follow the instructions.

5. Load data from existing database?

If you're migrating the server and closing down the old one, you have 2 options to migrate the data over

1. Copying db.sqlite3 If the new server will still be using sqlite as the database, you can simply copy the db.sqlite3 file from the old server over the the new one and all should be working
2. Using Django's dumpdata and loaddata You can use dumpdata to dump everything in the database into a json file then use loaddata on the new server to populate them all again. Using this you can switch from using sqlite to using another database by changing the database driver and load the data into the new database

Built with

• Django: a server framework for python
• Nginx: webserver
• uWSGI: application server container
• Sqlite: small imbeded database
• Circleci: continuous intergration service
• Codecov: code coverage service
• Sentry: automated error log capture
• Papertrail: loggin service

Notes

• The db.sqlite3 IS the database. Backup regularly and don't delete it on production
• The front end template dir is set to static/build/ with entry point of react_base.html

Things to remember

• set DEPLOYMENT environment variable in production
• set DJANGO_SECRET_KEY environment variable in production
• set PAPERTRAIL_LOG_DESTINATION environment variable in production
• regenerate django secret key
• protect master branch
• run collectstatic