This file documents the contents of this module See the devel/ subdir for more devel-oriented doc. ==================== 1 minute howto * REQUIREMENTS is to have python + django installed django ** should be straightforward ** see devel/django-install.txt in case of trouble * git clone git://git.onelab.eu/myslice-django.git -- or -- * git clone ssh://yourlogin@git.onelab.eu/git/myslice-django.git * edit myslice/settings.py and ** change the location of your backend API (not yet supported) * edit myslice/config.py and enter the details of your manifold backend * init django $ manage.py syncdb * gather static files $ ./manage.py collectstatic (formerly, we used make static, which is deprecated) * run a local server: $ manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:8000 -- or -- my advice: $ devel/server-loop.sh when you just need to hit ^C yourself when your static files need to be refreshed - see below * use it from your browser (See more notes on using the development server below) * install dependencies $ pip install -r path/to/requirements/file.txt ==================== Status *** Authentication *** Although there still are a few hard-coded accounts in the system, you will only be able to see some static views and won't be able to send real queries if you use these, so you'd better use a real account (one that your manifold backend knows about). For logging out: click on 'logged as *jean*', this shows a confirmation page for logging out. this is intended to be temporary. *** Packaging *** I've done a very rough attempt at packaging for rpm. The logic seems about right but needs more work, in particular in terms of installing myslice.conf in the httpd conf.d directory. It seems like our app won't work on f14 as is because Django is only 1.3.1 on f14 Plan is to target f18 but I lack a test machine. Also of course I'll try to tackle debian/ubunti at some point. *** Features *** We have a basic model for asynchroneous queries (referring to manifold queries) and for plugins (in the most general sense a plugin is just a piece of the output that may be connected to a query) Right now the UI has a handful of demo views only; as of this writing only the list of slices actually comes from the manifold backend in an asynchroneous way. Also all the views are gathered in the trash/ locations for now, being that they're only for assessment purposes. * dahsboard : has one async. query and 2 plugins that share that query; the intent was to demo a different layout in both cases, although the datatables one won't work yet at this point. * the 'Plugin' view demonstrates most of the available plugins. * slice view : only demonstrates how to use URLs to pass arguments along * scroll view : mostly it only illustrates that some pages can be made public (no need to login) * tab view : a hand-made tab widget Not much effort has yet been put into coming up with a nice layout, feel free to tweak that but it's probably still way too early for this. ==================== Third party tools shipped: * jquery * datatables * spin * bootstrap * and others are added as we build the system when they become needed I've tried to keep track of the version I picked and to have an easy upgrade path. ==================== Contents: 1st level subdirs ========== code from git * myslice: this is the django 'project', where to look for . settings.py . urls.py * manifold: the code for dealing with queries, sending them to the backend, and offering the /manifold/proxy/ URL * unfold: the code for building / rendering plugins * plugins: the actual code for plugins * auth: a django 'app' that deals with authentication; see especially auth.backend.MyCustomBackend for how to use a separate authentication system, as well as settings.py for how to enable it * trash/ rough/preliminary views in here - as the name suggests this is temporary * views/ will receive actual views over time currently has some global html templates as well + some global static files (css, js, images..) * insert_above: a third-party django app for adding on-the-fly mentions to css or js files that need to go in the header * third-party/ * third party javascript and css stuff (bootstrapfs, jquery, this kind of things) see more about that below too * devel: no code in there, only various notes and other scripts useful for developers ========== automatically generated * all-static: (generated, no need to source-control) this is where 'make static' will gather all your static contents if you run a local server make has convenience targets to refresh this area $ make static $ make clean-static * myslice.sqlite3 this is where django stores its own stuff, as per settings.py ==================== conventions for templates & static files ==================== and NOTES on using the development server . first off, running manage.py runserver is provided by django as a development convenience but SHOULD NOT be used in production . second, when you do use it for developement purposes, please be aware that: .. the recommended layout for the various files and pieces (py, html, js and css) with django is IMHO really painful; we *SHOULD* use e.g. plugins/simplelist.py, plugins/templates/plugins.html, plugins/static/js/simplelist.js plugins/static/css/simplelist.css which I have tried doing for a while but I found mmyself just hopping around in the file tree all day long, wasting cycles all along .. as that does not make sense IMHO, I've rewritten the tool for gathering these pieces (this is in the Makefile). Bottom line is we can essentially store this wherever we want. The only restriction being that if you have a template that is *not* html, then it *has to* sit in a templates/ directory, otherwise it gets shipped as a static file. .. as a result, we can now store all the files building a plugin in a single (git) directory; like e.g. plugins/quickfilter/quickfilter.py plugins/quickfilter/quickfilter.html plugins/quickfilter/quickfilter.js plugins/quickfilter/quickfilter.css Of course it's a completely different matter once the service is packaged and installed, these files of course get properly separated. .. as a result it is a little bit less convenient to use the development server when you change the layout of your static and template files, you might need to re-run 'make static', so it is recommended to use devel/server-loop.sh instead All this being said, here are our current conventions for storing templates and static files * templates: we store this under templates/ within the corresponding app, e.g. auth/templates/login.html for now this is mostly about html, but the engine can be used for rendering anything including js(on) or whatever (in which case, as stated above, this *must* have /templates/ in its path. * static files: we chose to have all static files (images, but also javascript and stylesheets) in the various proj or app where they belong, with a layout like: where-it-belongs/ img/ css/ js/ Honestly it's not yet very clear sometimes what 'where-it-belongs' should be sometimes, and it does not matter too much anyway, given that the code doesn't need to change when we move things around. So in particular it's fuzzy between myslice/ (where the logo could fit e.g.) views/ and even trash/ Makefile has a few convenience targets to list all kinds of stuff; the 2 major targets are $ make static templates that would reset all-static/ and all-templates/ for you from the other contents * third-party please note that the set of files that actually get exposed in all-static from third-party is hand-coded in Makefile because we tried to preserve the original codebase layout from mainstream, and there's only so much in common between 2 differents js libraries at this point. ======== update django database to reflect changes in existing models without any migration system (e.g., south) ========= $python manage.py reset #Django 1.5.1 $python manage.py flush This will update the database tables for your app, but will completely destroy any data that existed in those tables. If the changes you made to your app model do not break your old schema (for instance, you added a new, optional field) you can simply dump the data before and reload it afterwards, like so: $python manage.py dumpdata > temp_data.json $python manage.py reset $python manage.py loaddata temp_data.json If your changes break your old schema this won't work - in which case tools like south or django evolution are great.