fras

fras is a Face Recognition based Attendance System. It is a simple web application built using Python flask and VueJS. The face recognition task is accomplished using face_recognition.

Development environment setup

System requirements

1. git client should be installed on your machine.
2. The backend code is written using Python 3.6 or higher
3. SQLite is used for database. You can use other RDBMS if you like.
4. NodeJS stable LTS version. (Can be installed by following these steps: https://nodejs.org/en/download/). We use node for setting up VueJS client app (https://cli.vuejs.org/guide/installation.html).
5. We use Visual Studio Code for developing and debugging code. Install Microsoft's Python and VueJS Vetur extensions.

Steps to prepare the workspace

1. Create a python virtual environment for this project. See this for how to do it: https://docs.python.org/3/library/venv.html. E.g., you can run the following: python3 -m venv ~/.pyenv/FRAS to create the virtual environment in ~/.pyenv/FRAS folder.

2. Open a shell and cd into a directory that you want to work in.

3. Clone this git repository: git clone https://github.com/bsodhi/fras.git.

4. Run cd fras and then source ~/.pyenv/FRAS/bin/activate to activate the python virtual environment.

5. ONLY if you are using MySQL: On Ubuntu, you will do sudo apt-get install libmysqlclient-dev to install MySQL client development library. It will be needed when we install the python connector via pip in following steps.

6. Run pip install -r api_service/requirements.txt.

   NOTE: Some modules may fail to install due to unavailability of certain native libraries or headers on your OS. You can Google the error text to find a solution.

7. Install necessary dependencies for VueJS app:

   1. cd client_app
   2. npm install

Running the application

After setting up the workspace as per the steps listed above you can deploy and run the application. Following are the steps:

1. cd fras/client_app
2. Compile the VueJS app: npm run build
3. Start the MySQL server (ONLY if you are using MySQL instead of SQLite). You may also have to set proper values for the database connection information, and other settings if using other than SQLite.
4. cd fras/api_service
5. source ~/.pyenv/FRAS/bin/activate to activate the python virtual environment.
6. Run python to start a python session, and issue the following commands to setup the database:
   1. from models import *
   2. setup_demo_db()
   3. Ctrl-D to exit the python session.
7. Run python fras_app.py to start the web application.
8. Open http://localhost:4567/fras/app/index.html
9. Login using ID admin and password admin (Or whatever you set via the setup_demo_db())