Plattform zur Praktika- & Seminarplatzvergabe

Diese Django-Webanwendung wurde im Rahmen des Bachelor Praktikums 2021/22 entwickelt.

PPSV

Description

PPSV is a platform for students to select and manage their topics in courses like seminars or practica. Additionally, students are able to do this alone or in selfmade groups.

Setup

This repository contains a Django project with several apps.

Requirements

PPSV has two types of requirements: System requirements are dependent on the operating system and need to be installed manually beforehand. Python requirements will be installed inside a virtual environment (strongly recommended) during a setup.

System Requirements

• Python 3.7+ incl. development tools
• Virtualenv

Python Requirements

Python requirements are listed in requirements.txt. They can be installed with pip using -r requirements.txt

Development Setup

• Create a new directory that should contain the files in the future, e.g. mkdir seminarplatzvergabe
• Change into that directory cd seminarplatzvergabe
• Clone this repository git clone URL .

Linux

Manual Setup

1. Set up a virtual environment using the proper python version virtualenv venv -p python3
2. Activate virtualenv source venv/bin/activate
3. Install python requirements pip install -r requirements.txt
4. Set up necessary database tables etc. python manage.py migrate
5. Setup initial revision for all registered models for versioning python manage.py createinitialrevisions
6. Compile translations python manage.py compilemessages
7. Create a privileged user, credentials are entered interactively on CLI python manage.py createsuperuser
8. Deactivate virtualenv deactivate

Development Server

To start the application for development use python manage.py runserver from the project directory. Do not use this for deployment!

In your browser, access http://127.0.0.1:8000/ and continue from there.

Windows

Manual Setup

1. Set up a virtual environment using the proper python version virtualenv venv -p python3`
2. Activate virtualenv .\venv\Scripts\activate
3. Install python requirements pip install -r requirements.txt
4. Set up necessary database tables etc. python manage.py migrate
5. Setup initial revision for all registered models for versioningpython manage.py createinitialrevisions
6. Prepare static files (can be omitted for dev setups) python manage.py collectstatic
7. Compile translations python manage.py compilemessages
8. Create a privileged user, credentials are entered interactively on CLI python manage.py createsuperuser
9. Deactivate virtualenv deactivate

Development Server

To start the application for development use python manage.py runserver from the project directory. Do not use this for deployment!

In your browser, access http://127.0.0.1:8000/ and continue from there.

Deployment Setup

This application can be deployed using a web server as any other Django application. Remember to use a secret key that is not stored in any repository or similar. It should not be necessary to disable DEBUG mode in settings.py when using settings_production.py as later described in this tutorial.

Step-by-Step Instructions

1. Log into your system with a sudo user

2. Install system requirements

3. Create a folder, e.g. mkdir /srv/seminarplatzvergabe/

4. Change to the new directory cd /srv/seminarplatzvergabe/

5. Clone this repository git clone URL .

6. Set up a virtual environment using the proper python version virtualenv venv -p python3

7. Activate virtualenv source venv/bin/activate

8. Update tools pip install --upgrade setuptools pip wheel

9. Install python requirements pip install -r requirements.txt

10. Install postgres

11. Create postgres user and database and grant rights (insert suitable names for username and dbname)

    • sudo -u postgres createuser username
    • sudo -u postgres createdb dbname
    • sudo -u postgres psql
    • psql=# alter user with encrypted password '';
    • psql=# grant all privileges on database to ;

12. Create the file ppsv/settings_secrets.py (copy from settings_secrets.py.sample) and fill it with the necessary secrets (e.g. generated by tr -dc 'a-z0-9!@#$%^&*(-_=+)' < /dev/urandom | head -c50) (it is a good idea to restrict read permissions from others) Set the host in the file as HOSTS = ['*'] If necessary enable uwsgi proxy plugin for Apache e.g.a2enmod proxy_uwsgi

13. Edit the apache config to serve the application and the static and media files, e.g. on a dedicated system in /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf within the VirtualHost tag add:

    Alias /static /srv/seminarplatzvergabe/ppsv/static
    <Directory /srv/seminarplatzvergabe/ppsv/static>
      Require all granted
    </Directory>
    
    Alias /media /srv/seminarplatzvergabe/ppsv/media
    <Directory /srv/seminarplatzvergabe/ppsv/media>
      Require all granted
    </Directory>
    
    ProxyPassMatch ^/media/ !
    ProxyPassMatch ^/static/ !
    ProxyPass / uwsgi://127.0.0.1:3035/
    

    or create a new config (.conf) file (similar to apache-seminarplatzvergabe.conf) replacing $SUBDOMAIN with the subdomain the system should be available under, and $MAILADDRESS with the e-mail address of your administrator and $PATHTO with the appropriate paths. Copy or symlink it to /etc/apache2/sites-available. Then activate it with a2ensite apache-seminarplatzvergabe.

14. Restart Apache sudo apachectl restart

15. Create a dedicated user, e.g. adduser django --disabled-login

16. Transfer ownership of the folder to the new user chown -R django:django /srv/seminarplatzvergabe

17. Make sure your wsgi.py looks like this

    import os, sys
    
    from django.core.wsgi import get_wsgi_application
    
    os.environ.setdefault("DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE", "settings_production")
    
    sys.path.append('srv/seminarplatzvergabe/ppsv/ppsv')
    
    application = get_wsgi_application()
    

18. Copy or symlink the uwsgi config in uwsgi-seminarplatzvergabe.ini to /etc/uwsgi/apps-available/ and then symlink it to /etc/uwsgi/apps-enabled/ using e.g., ln -s /srv/seminarplatzvergabe/uwsgi-collab-coursebook.ini /etc/uwsgi/apps-available/seminarplatzvergabe.ini and
    ln -s /etc/uwsgi/apps-available/seminarplatzvergabe.ini /etc/uwsgi/apps-enabled/seminarplatzvergabe.ini

19. Test your uwsgi configuration file with uwsgi --ini uwsgi-seminarplatzvergabe.ini It should contain the following lines:

    chdir = /srv/seminarplatzvergabe/ppsv
    wsgi-file = ppsv/wsgi.py
    env = DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=ppsv.settings_production
    

20. Restart uwsgi sudo systemctl restart uwsgi

21. Prepare static files python manage.py collectstatic

22. Execute the update script bash update_prod.sh or ./update_prod.sh

23. If not already active on that server, obtain an SSL certificate, e.g., through Let's Encrypt

Structure

This repository contains a Django project called seminarplatzvergabe. The functionality is encapsulated into Django apps:

1. course: This app contains the general Django models used to represent courses, students, etc.
2. frontend: This app provides everything the users see when interacting with the platform
3. ppsv: This directory contains basic settings.

Developer Notes

• to regenerate translations use python manage.py makemessages -l de_DE --ignore venv
• to create a data backup use python manage.py dumpdata --indent=2 > db.json --traceback