CourseOcean

Intro

A scheduling platform for student to choose courses.

API

1. API Document
2. Dev Server
3. Prod Server

Preparing for development

Prerequisites

To successfully run the following configuration commands, you will need:

1. Python 3.7 or 3.8 with download instruction here
2. Node.js 14.x with download instruction here

You can check whether or not your system has the above binaries via:

# For python version checking, 
python3 --version
python --version

# For Node.js
node -v

Installation

Install virtualenv and other python packages

# Install virtualenv for python
# Do make sure that your `python3` points to a python3.7 or python3.8 version
python -m pip install --user virtualenv
python -m virtualenv --help
virtualenv -p python3 venv

# Activate virtualenv for python
source venv/bin/activate

# Install python packages
# If in test env
pip install -r requirements/dev.txt

# If in prod env, which you usually do not need to
pip install -r requirements.txt

Install Node.js packages

npm install

Additional packages (for production only)

# Ubuntu
# postgresql requirement for python package psycopg2
sudo apt install libpq-dev

Build the project (for Node.js part only)

# Build in dev setting, allow compilation on file changes
npm run dev

# Build in production setting, maximize performance and minimize space
npm run build

Run the project

Setup

Prepare the environment for projects

# Use the virtualenv for python
source venv/bin/activate

# Frontend code realtime compilation
# Run this in another terminal tab
npm run dev

Run dummy email server

Since the project has included email service, you will need a dummy smtp server to listen to it in order to get, for instance, the verification email link. To run the email server, simply run the following command in another terminal tab:

make dummy-smtp

Which will launch a fake smtp server listening on localhost:1025

Launch redis db and worker process

The project uses a redis database as a queue for pushing jobs to backend worker process in order to separate the external API requests from frontend website rendering. Therefore, a redis database installation is necessary, you can install and run the redis database via:

make start_redis

Which will fetch and install the redis db when redis-server is not in the PATH params. The first this command runs might takes a few minutes due to download, compiling, and testing the redis db. After the first pass, it will be pretty quick.

In addition to redis db, a redis queue worker process must be started prior to launching the server via

make start_worker_%

Where % is the setting file config like local, remote

Migrate database

Database migration will apply database changes to the database specified in the setting file specified by the --settings flag here. You can change the setting file specified by changing the package string after it. Currently we have four setting configuration:

1. homiehomie.settings_d.local
   1. setting for local testing only
   2. Will use local sqlite3 db
   3. DEBUG=True
2. homiehomie.settings_d.remote
   1. Setting nearly identical to homiehomie.settings_d.local
   2. Except the database is connected to development database hosted on thexyzlab.studio
3. homiehomie.settings_d.dev
   1. NOT suitable for local testing
   2. Setting for development server
   3. use development database, which is the same as homiehomie.settings_d.remote
   4. DEBUG=False
   5. Use whitenoise to serve static file, need to run python manage.py collectstatic --noinput before launching
4. homiehomie.settings_d.prod
   1. NOT suitable for local testing
   2. Setting for production server

You should always run this part prior to start the server.

# Migrate database for local testing setting
# Python
python manage.py migrate --settings=homiehomie.settings_d.local

# Or makefile
make migratedb_local

Launching server

If you use makefile command, collectstatic and migrate are automatically handled by it so you do not need to run them again

# Development Use local db
make testserver

# Or
make testserver_local

# Use remote db
make testserver_remote

# Use Production server and local setting
make prodserver_local

# Use dev db
make testserver_dev

Testing and coverage

You can use either the IDE or manage.py to run the test scripts, but a series of makefile commands are already set up for you to use:

# Python Django testing
# Run coverage testing on local machine
make coverage

# See coverage report
make coverage-report

Additional note

Makefile

A series of makefile commands are set up to ease debugging.

# Display help message
make help

# Run coverage test
make coverage

# Display coverage report
make coverage-report

# Run test smtp server
make dummy-smtp

# Run test server
make testserver

# Generate Django key
make random-key