Introduction

The PAML Editor (PAMLED) is a web application that supports the authoring and sharing of PAML protocols. PAMLED consists of two components: frontend and backend. The frontend is a React-based server for handling the graphical interface. The backend is a Django REST server that handles persistent storage (protocols, user accounts, and primitives), and access to the pyPAML library.

User Guide

See the user guide at: User Guide

Running the PAML Editor in Development

Pre-requisites

• Backend
  • Python 3.9
  • Pipenv
• Frontend
  • Node & Npm

Backend Instructions

1. On your development system install backend dependencies

2. Get PAMLED:

   git clone https://github.com/Bioprotocols/pamled.git

3. Initialize the pamled pipenv environment:

   cd pamled
   pipenv install
   pipenv shell

4. Set the secret key in backend/.env:

   python -c "import secrets; print(f'SECRET_KEY=\"{secrets.token_urlsafe()}\"')"  > backend/.env

5. Initialize the backend

   
   # from within the pipenv shell
   cd backend
   python manage.py makemigrations accounts editor
   python manage.py migrate

optionally create a admin user

python manage.py createsuperuser

6. Start the backend
```bash
# from within the pipenv shell, in backend/
python manage.py runserver

The backend server should now be running. You will see some output in the terminal like this:

Performing system checks...

System check identified no issues (0 silenced).
January 24, 2022 - 18:52:36
Django version 3.2.9, using settings 'pamled.settings'
Starting development server at http://127.0.0.1:8000/
Quit the server with CONTROL-C.

Frontend Instructions

1. On your development system install:

   • node & npm

2. Initialize the frontend

   # while in backend/ from above
   cd ../frontend/web
   npm install

3. Start the frontend

   # while in frontend/web/
   npm run start

If npm does not open a browser automatically then you can connect to the frontend at http://localhost:3000 from your preferred browser.

4. Once connected you should be greeted by a login page. If you made a superuser account then you can login with that. Otherwise you can navigate to the sign up page and register a new account with your development database.

5. Once logged in you will see the editor.

Development using Visual Studio Code

For those familiar with VSCode the backand and frontend instructions have mostly been encapsulated within a VSCode workspace. See the pamled.code-workspace in the root of the repo.

Note that this workspace does still require pipenv and npm to be installed.

Tasks

The workspace provides a set of tasks available via command palette (Ctrl+Shift+P) under Tasks: Run Task.

These make initialization of the backend and frontend a bit easier to manage.

Tasks:

• Make Migrations
• Migrate
• Create Superuser
• Nuke DB & Migrations

Launchers

It also provides a set of launch commands available from the Run and Debug panel (Ctrl+Shift+D).

These make it easier to launch all of the editor parts at once.

Launchers

• Django
• React
• Firefox
• Chrome

  Compound Launchers

• Django & React & Firefox
• Django & React & Chrome