installation

Installation

Prerequisites

APIS webapp needs Python 3.5+ and several python packages that can be easily installed by using pip.

Create a new virtualenv and activate it:

virtualenv -p pyton3.5 your_virtualenv_name
source your_virtualenv_name/bin/activate

Git and submodules

We use the system in several different projects. To allow for high configurability while keeping it simple we decided to split the system in several git submodules:

• apis-core: the main application code
• apis-PROJECTNAME-settings (for the main system used in apis project we omit the PROJECTNAME in the repo names): The settings folder of the various projects. These contain not only the app settings (e.g. db user, db password etc.) but also the settings for the autocompletes and the RDF parsers.
• apis-PROJECTNAME-webpage: The webpage app of the respective project. Seperating these base templates and javascripts from the rest of the app allows us to give every project its very own look.

If you want to get a basic running system that you can work from, you can clone apis-apis and initialize the submodules:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/acdh-oeaw/apis.git

After that you need to set two symlinks:

cd apisapp/apis
ln -s ../../apis-settings settings
cd ..
ln -s ../apis-webpage webpage

Now you have the correct folder structure in place and are good to go on with installing

Installation

Change to the directory you have downloaded APIS to and install the needed Python packages:

cd apisapp
pip install -r requirements.txt

Next you need to create a file called copy the APIS_directory/apisapp/apis/settings/dummysettings.py file to another name. We suggest server.py:

cp APIS_directory/apisapp/apis/settings/dummysettings.py APIS_directory/apisapp/apis/settings/server.py

Edit server.py to your needs. E.g. if you intend to use Mysql it should look something like:

import os
from .base import *

SECRET_KEY = 'asdaaserffsdfi'
# SECURITY WARNING: don't run with debug turned on in production!
DEBUG = True

DATABASES = {
'default': {
    'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.mysql',
    'NAME': 'databsename',
    'USER': 'dtabaseuser',
    'PASSWORD': 'databasepassword',
    'HOST': 'localhost',   # Or an IP Address that your DB is hosted on
    'PORT': '3306',
    }
}

Dont forget to set DEBUG = False once you are in production.

Once the database connection is set run:

python manage.py migrate --settings=apis.settings.server

For convenience we suggest you alter manage.py to:

if __name__ == "__main__":
    os.environ.setdefault("DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE", "apis.settings.server")

    from django.core.management import execute_from_command_line

    execute_from_command_line(sys.argv)

Once that is done you dont have to incluse --settings=apis.settings.server in your commands anymore.

Next we migrate the APIS internal tables:

python manage.py makemigrations metainfo entities relations vocabularies highlighter labels webpage
python manage.py migrate

and create a superuser:

python manage.py createsuperuser

answer the questions and change to the static directory to download javascript libraries:

If you havent installed NPM and bower yet you need to run:

sudo apt-get install npm
npm install -g bower

If you have already installed bower you can proceed with installing the javascript libraries directly:

cd webpage/static/webpage/libraries
bower install

python manage.py runserver

should bring up a development server window with your new apis instance.

Serving APIS via Apache WSGI

If you plan to use APIS in production you should deploy it via a proper webserver. We use Apache and mod_wsgi to do so. Our apche virtualhost config looks something like:

<VirtualHost *:80>
   ServerName server_name
   ServerAlias server_alias #alias names if needed
   DocumentRoot /var/www/html #document root of your installation
   WSGIDaemonProcess apis.eos.arz.oeaw.ac.at user=#1025 group=#1025 python-path=/var/www/html/
   WSGIProcessGroup apis.eos.arz.oeaw.ac.at user=#1025 group=#1025 python-path=/var/www/html/
   WSGIScriptAlias / /var/www/html/apisapp/apis/wsgi.py
   <Directory /var/www/html>
     Require all granted
     AllowOverride All
     Options All granted
   </Directory>
   Alias /static /var/www/html/apisapp/static_dir #static directories to server via Apache
   Alias /downloads /var/www/html/apisapp/downloads
</VirtualHost>

If the database is connected and the virtualhost is configured you are good to go:

service apache2 reload