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🖌 Getting started

GitBook: https://app.gitbook.com/o/VKiW3E1K7hjy1vH8KntG/s/UQJVfI4Zuqwd4ojcZ8jg/readme/summary

iWEB

Project members: - Kai Barber-Harris - Dimitar Sivrev - Bethany Whiting - Jude Goulding - Daria Sazonova

Overview

iWEB is the working name for our web app. The system encourages green, sustainable behaviour by making the information to act in such a way as easily available as possible and rewarding users for acting on it.

Technical details

iWEB's user-facing website is served by a Django web framework with custom views and functions. The backend database is constructed in mySQL for release editions, and a database must be created and connected to in order for the site to function as intended. Optionally, you can load the packaged "test" database which includes a default admin account, a small set of "dummy" users, and a small set of items. The test database is best used to ensure iWEB is working to expected levels.

1. app-mysql

The "app" folder contains all the source code and related files for iWEB to function; this is the "official" first prototype release of iWEB. A "Getting started" setup guide is included at the bottom of this readme file, if you wish to run the app yourself.

2. app-sqlite

For ease of use for marking, we have also included the development branch of iWEB running on an embedded SQLite database. This is simply a copy of our most recent update to the main repository on github. We include this as the mySQL version can be tricky to set up even with a guide, and don't want to create unnecessary roadblocks to seeing our website as it should look; the two versions act exactly the same from the user's point of view.

How to run the SQLite version

The SQLite app can simply be run using the command python manage.py runserver in ./app-sqlite/iWEB.

Getting started

In order to run iWEB locally, there are certain dependencies that must be installed. Namely, these are Django and mySQL (server and client).

In order to run the server, Django must be provided with a valid user to access a valid mySQL database. This section of the readme will guide you through creating these requirements, assuming you have the earlier named dependencies installed.

mySQL setup

  1. Enter the mySQL command-line client as your root user.

  2. Create an empty database "iweb": CREATE DATABASE iweb;

  3. Add a new user to your mySQL: CREATE USER 'iweb_sqluser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password'; You may change the name of the user to whatever you wish, and the localhost to the name of the machine you plan to access the database from. If you are running the mySQL database and the Django server on the same machine, leave this as 'localhost'.

  4. Grant privileges to the user on the iweb database: GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON iweb.* TO 'iweb_sqluser'@'localhost'; FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

  5. Check these commands have worked: SHOW DATABASES; (should show a new database "iweb") SELECT user FROM mysql.user; (should show us our new user "iweb_sqluser") SHOW GRANTS FOR 'iweb_sqluser'@'localhost' (should show us the privileges our user has)

  6. If these commands appear to return data as we expect, we can move on.

Django setup

In the project directory, find the file settings.py at ./iWEB/app-mysql/iWEB/iWEB/settings.py. In this file, adjust the DATABASES key to provide Django the information it needs to find the database.

DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.mysql', 
        'NAME': 'iweb',
        'USER': 'iweb_sqluser',
        'PASSWORD': 'password',
        'HOST': 'localhost',  
        'PORT': '3306',
    }
}

Here, the example has been filled with the default options as written in the earlier section. However, these should be changed as you wish (especially the password).

Database pickup

At this point there are 2 options:

Pick up the test database

To pick up the test database, navigate to ./iWEB/app-mysql/iWEB and run the following commands: python manage.py migrate --run-syncdb python manage.py loaddata testdatabase.json This will populate the empty database we made in the mySQL command line client with the test database information. This database may still be modified later (write permissions are not affected).

Start from a fresh, empty database

To start from a fresh database, navigate to ./iWEB/app-mysql/iWEB and simply run the command: python manage.py migrate This will construct the database schema required to run iWEB properly on the empty database we created in the mySQL command line client.

Running the server

To run the server, navigate to ./iWEB/app-mysql/iWEB and run the command: python manage.py runserver If all has gone well, this will open the server on the localhost which can be accessed through any web browser at http://127.0.0.1:8000/. We are aware of an issue where the map will not properly load. In order to allow the map to load, run the server with the --insecure tag: python manage.py runserver --insecure This knowledge is made available for demonstration purposes, and the app prototype should not be deployed in this manner. A fix to securely load the map will be released in iWEB v2.0.

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