1 his file documents the contents of this module
3 See the devel/ subdir for more devel-oriented doc.
5 ==================== 1 minute howto
7 * REQUIREMENTS is to have python + django installed django
8 ** should be straightforward
9 ** see devel/django-install.txt in case of trouble
11 * git clone git://git.onelab.eu/myslice-django.git
13 * git clone ssh://yourlogin@git.onelab.eu/git/myslice-django.git
15 * edit myslice/settings.py and
16 ** change DEVELOPER_ROOT if you didnt clone into ~/git/myslice-django
17 ** change the location of your backend API (not yet supported)
19 * edit myslice/config.py and enter the details of your manifold backend
28 $ manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:8000
30 $ devel/server-loop.sh
31 when you just need to hit ^C yourself when your static files need to be refreshed - see below
33 * use it from your browser
34 (See more notes on using the development server below)
36 ==================== Status
38 *** Authentication ***
40 Although there still are a few hard-coded accounts in the system, you
41 will only be able to see some static views and won't be able to send
42 real queries if you use these, so you'd better use a real account (one
43 that your manifold backend knows about).
45 For logging out: click on 'logged as *jean*', this shows a
46 confirmation page for logging out. this is intended to be temporary.
50 I've done a very rough attempt at packaging for rpm.
51 The logic seems about right but needs more work, in particular in terms of installing myslice.conf
52 in the httpd conf.d directory.
53 It seems like our app won't work on f14 as is because Django is only 1.3.1 on f14
54 Plan is to target f18 but I lack a test machine.
55 Also of course I'll try to tackle debian/ubunti at some point.
59 We have a basic model for asynchroneous queries (referring to manifold
60 queries) and for plugins (in the most general sense a plugin is just a
61 piece of the output that may be connected to a query)
63 Right now the UI has a handful of demo views only; as of this writing
64 only the list of slices actually comes from the manifold backend in an
67 Also all the views are gathered in the trash/ locations for now, being
68 that they're only for assessment purposes.
70 * dahsboard : has one async. query and 2 plugins that share that
71 query; the intent was to demo a different layout in both cases,
72 although the datatables one won't work yet at this point.
74 * the 'Plugin' view demonstrates most of the available plugins.
76 * slice view : only demonstrates how to use URLs to pass arguments along
78 * scroll view : mostly it only illustrates that some pages can be made
79 public (no need to login)
81 * tab view : a hand-made tab widget
83 Not much effort has yet been put into coming up with a nice layout,
84 feel free to tweak that but it's probably still way too early for
89 Third party tools shipped:
96 I've tried to keep track of the version I picked and to have an easy upgrade path.
98 ==================== Contents: 1st level subdirs
100 ========== code from git
102 this is the django 'project', where to look for
107 the code for dealing with queries, sending them to the backend, and offering the /manifold/proxy/ URL
110 the code for building / rendering plugins
113 the actual code for plugins
116 a django 'app' that deals with authentication; see especially
117 auth.backend.MyCustomBackend
118 for how to use a separate authentication system,
119 as well as settings.py for how to enable it
122 rough/preliminary views in here - as the name suggests this is temporary
125 will receive actual views over time
126 currently has some global html templates as well
127 + some global static files (css, js, images..)
130 a third-party django app for adding on-the-fly mentions to css or js files that need to go in the header
133 * third party javascript and css stuff (bootstrapfs, jquery, this kind of things)
134 see more about that below too
137 no code in there, only various notes and other scripts useful for developers
139 ========== automatically generated
141 * all-static: (generated, no need to source-control)
142 this is where 'make static' will gather all your static contents if you run a local server
143 make has convenience targets to refresh this area
148 this is where django stores its own stuff, as per settings.py
150 ==================== conventions for templates & static files
151 ==================== and NOTES on using the development server
153 . first off, running manage.py runserver is provided by django as a development convenience but
154 SHOULD NOT be used in production
156 . second, when you do use it for developement purposes, please be aware that:
158 .. the recommended layout for the various files and pieces (py, html, js and css) with django is
159 IMHO really painful; we *SHOULD* use e.g.
160 plugins/simplelist.py,
161 plugins/templates/plugins.html,
162 plugins/static/js/simplelist.js
163 plugins/static/css/simplelist.css
164 which I have tried doing for a while but I found mmyself just hopping around in the file tree all
165 day long, wasting cycles all along
167 .. as that does not make sense IMHO, I've rewritten the tool for gathering these pieces (this is in
168 the Makefile). Bottom line is we can essentially store this wherever we want.
169 The only restriction being that if you have a template that is *not* html, then it *has to* sit
170 in a templates/ directory, otherwise it gets shipped as a static file.
172 .. as a result, we can now store all the files building a plugin in a single (git) directory; like e.g.
173 plugins/quickfilter/quickfilter.py
174 plugins/quickfilter/quickfilter.html
175 plugins/quickfilter/quickfilter.js
176 plugins/quickfilter/quickfilter.css
178 Of course it's a completely different matter once the service is packaged and installed, these
179 files of course get properly separated.
181 .. as a result it is a little bit less convenient to use the development server when you change the
182 layout of your static and template files, you might need to re-run 'make static', so it is
183 recommended to use devel/server-loop.sh instead
186 All this being said, here are our current conventions for storing templates and static files
189 we store this under templates/ within the corresponding app, e.g.
190 auth/templates/login.html
191 for now this is mostly about html, but the engine can be used for rendering anything
192 including js(on) or whatever (in which case, as stated above, this *must* have /templates/ in its path.
195 we chose to have all static files (images, but also javascript and stylesheets) in the various
196 proj or app where they belong, with a layout like:
201 Honestly it's not yet very clear sometimes what 'where-it-belongs' should be sometimes, and it
202 does not matter too much anyway, given that the code doesn't need to change when we move things
203 around. So in particular it's fuzzy between myslice/ (where the logo could fit e.g.) views/ and
206 Makefile has a few convenience targets to list all kinds of stuff; the 2 major targets are
208 $ make static templates
210 that would reset all-static/ and all-templates/ for you from the other contents
213 please note that the set of files that actually get exposed in all-static from third-party is
214 hand-coded in Makefile because we tried to preserve the original codebase layout from mainstream,
215 and there's only so much in common between 2 differents js libraries at this point.