Problem Installing In Virtual Environment

[gfleetwood]

Hi,

I'm on a 64 bit Ubuntu 16.04 machine and followed more or less the following steps to install sofi:

1. Created a conda virtual environment containing Python 3.5.

2. Downloaded the zip of sofi and ran python setup install in the extracted folder.

I then created a file with the code example from the README and tried to run it from the command line with python sofi.py. This is what I got as the output:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "sofi.py", line 1, in <module>
    from sofi.app import Sofi
  File "/home/gordon/Downloads/sofi.py", line 1, in <module>
    from sofi.app import Sofi
ImportError: No module named 'sofi.app'; 'sofi' is not a package

Any idea what could be wrong?

[tryexceptpass]

I haven't tried with a conda virtual env, but I see there are some issues with setup.py ... Do you have any trouble if you work from the sofi directory and pip install -r requirements.txt in the meantime?

[gfleetwood]

I tried install the requirements outside of a virtual environment and this is the traceback:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/gordon/anaconda3/bin/pip", line 11, in <module>
    sys.exit(main())
  File "/home/gordon/anaconda3/lib/python3.5/site-packages/pip/__init__.py", line 233, in main
    return command.main(cmd_args)
  File "/home/gordon/anaconda3/lib/python3.5/site-packages/pip/basecommand.py", line 252, in main
    pip_version_check(session)
  File "/home/gordon/anaconda3/lib/python3.5/site-packages/pip/utils/outdated.py", line 102, in pip_version_check
    installed_version = get_installed_version("pip")
  File "/home/gordon/anaconda3/lib/python3.5/site-packages/pip/utils/__init__.py", line 838, in get_installed_version
    working_set = pkg_resources.WorkingSet()
  File "/home/gordon/anaconda3/lib/python3.5/site-packages/pip/_vendor/pkg_resources/__init__.py", line 644, in __init__
    self.add_entry(entry)
  File "/home/gordon/anaconda3/lib/python3.5/site-packages/pip/_vendor/pkg_resources/__init__.py", line 700, in add_entry
    for dist in find_distributions(entry, True):
  File "/home/gordon/anaconda3/lib/python3.5/site-packages/pip/_vendor/pkg_resources/__init__.py", line 1949, in find_eggs_in_zip
    if metadata.has_metadata('PKG-INFO'):
  File "/home/gordon/anaconda3/lib/python3.5/site-packages/pip/_vendor/pkg_resources/__init__.py", line 1463, in has_metadata
    return self.egg_info and self._has(self._fn(self.egg_info, name))
  File "/home/gordon/anaconda3/lib/python3.5/site-packages/pip/_vendor/pkg_resources/__init__.py", line 1823, in _has
    return zip_path in self.zipinfo or zip_path in self._index()
  File "/home/gordon/anaconda3/lib/python3.5/site-packages/pip/_vendor/pkg_resources/__init__.py", line 1703, in zipinfo
    return self._zip_manifests.load(self.loader.archive)
  File "/home/gordon/anaconda3/lib/python3.5/site-packages/pip/_vendor/pkg_resources/__init__.py", line 1643, in load
    mtime = os.stat(path).st_mtime
FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/home/gordon/anaconda3/lib/python3.5/site-packages/txaio-2.6.2-py3.5.egg'

[tryexceptpass]

This looks like something's off with the python path. It's essentially saying it can't find the egg file for a module it just downloaded.

[gfleetwood]

Managed to get rid of that error but now I get this:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "sofi.py", line 1, in <module>
    from sofi.app import Sofi
  File "/home/gordon/Downloads/sofi.py", line 1, in <module>
    from sofi.app import Sofi
ImportError: No module named 'sofi.app'; 'sofi' is not a package

I also tried installing it on a Windows machine and I got the same thing.

[tryexceptpass]

This still looks like something's off with the python path. Just to be sure of the steps, your doing:

• git clone
• mkvirtualenv sample-env --python python3 - or your favorite way of managing virtualenvs
• cd sofi
• python setup.py install

[gfleetwood]

So that works. The only difference from my previous attempts was cloning the repo instead of downloading the zipped version. Not sure if that's strange or just something to know. Thanks!

I actually have two questions.

1. Can sofi apps be deployed on the web - using Heroku, for instance? If not, could it theorectically be integrated with something like Flask?

2. What resources would you recommend for someone looking to understand how sofi was built?

[tryexceptpass]

1. Yes, you can deploy on the web. You still need a server like NGINX that can serve the main.html and sofi.js files. I haven't worked out all the details yet of a proper deployment, but I've verified I can have multiple clients, though I don't know how many in parallel.
2. I've got an issue open to build documentation. I plan to put it up on read the docs. Unfortunately I haven't had much time to work on it lately. I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have through this issue in the meantime.

The README gives a quick and dirty. Adding a few more items:

• The sofi.app.Sofi class is what you need to start the server.
• Sofi.__init__ has some relevant parameters for setting up listening address and port, as well as the singleclient param that you'll need to set to False if you're planning some web stuff.
• Sofi.start() actually starts the server, and you'll need autobrowse set to False if you don't want it to automatically open a browser when it runs (which is the case for a web app).
• All the typical widgets are in sofi.app.ui, you'll have to look through those to see what's available at the moment. We're still missing several key items.
• User interaction happens through websockets and handlers / callbacks.
• Sofi.handlers gives you an idea of the default event handlers I've configured.
• The main concept is to use the Sofi.register() methods to setup callback functions to the different events you need.
• When you browse to main.html (or run start with autobrowse), it loads up the sofi.js file which then sets up the websocket used for interaction.
• When socket setup is complete, it sends the init event. This is the initial event you want to listen for in order to setup your main content.
• The DOM is updated through a number of helper functions in the Sofi class: load, append, remove, replace, addclass, removeclass, text, attr, style, property. Each of these has docstrings with a short description of what they do.
• sofi.ui.* widgets are intended to help build content, mostly based on Bootstrap. The __str__ methods on those objects will spit out the HTML that represents whatever properties you've configured with them.
• Since widgets are python objects, you can easily compound them. Meaning, you can spend a lot of time making a panel widget to show an image in whichever way you like. Once you're happy with it, you can subclass it to change a particular property property on it, or make I more complex gallery widget that contains multiples of your images. You could even make them pip installable and distribute them for other people to use.
• You shouldn't have to store state in the browser, use python to manage all of that.

[gfleetwood]

Thanks for the detailed reply! Looking forward to see how the project progresses, and I'll try to contribute if I can.

I'll close this now.