KidViz

Learning Sciences Observation App - Vanderbilt University

Running Locally

To run locally (on OSX... I can help if you're not on OSX) first install homebrew if you don't already have it. It is a package manager for OSX and is useful for installing all kinds of things.

Next, install python3 using brew install python. You can confirm that it worked by opening a new terminal window and typing which python - you should get something like /usr/local/opt/python/libexec/bin/python.

Once you've done that, you'll want to install virtualenv and virtualenvwrapper. Use the command pip install virtualenv virtualenvwrapper to install both of them in your Python3 packages folder. They will automatically be added to your PATH. You'll want to add the following lines to the end of your .zshrc or .bashrc file:

export WORKON_HOME=$HOME/.virtualenvs
source /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh

Now when you open a new terminal window, you should be able to use the command lsvirtualenv without any errors.

Next, install PostgreSQL, using brew install postgresql. Once it finishes, run brew services start postgresql to let homebrew automatically manage its lifecycle for you (it will always just run silently in the background).

(hint: you can also install the GUI program PSequel via brew cask install psequel to use a GUI to browse around your data. I use Postico, but it's a paid program).

Once all this is done, you'll want to type the command createdb kidviz to instruct postgres to make a new database called "kidviz". When this runs successfully, you're ready to dive into the project itself.

Clone the repository to a folder (mine is just ~/Desktop/KidViz). cd into the folder, then run mkvirtualenv KidViz to tell Python3 to make a virtual environment specifically for this project called KidViz. Once that's done, you should do a which python command, which should give you output similar to /Users/yourusername/.virtualenvs/KidViz/bin/python. This indicates you're correctly in the virtual environment for this project. While still in the KidViz folder, type pip install -r requirements.txt to install into your local environment all of the dependencies that this project has. This should run without any problems but might take a minute or two.

Once the dependencies are all installed, type ./manage.py migrate to run the database migrations - these are a series of mutating SQL scripts automatically generated by Django based on our models that prime the database with the correct tables and columns for our project. Next, type /.manage.py createsuperuser to create an administrator user that can log into the admin panel to modify data from there as well.

From here, you're all set. To actually run the entire service, type ./manage.py runserver. This will run the server locally at http://127.0.0.1:8000/ (or alternatively accessible at http://localhost:8000/. At this point you should be able to use everything in your browser.

If you want allow user to create new users you should set kidviz | admin perms | Can Approve or Deny Users permission.