BackEnd

1. Prerequisities

   Before proceeding with the installation, ensure that the following prerequisites are met:

   • PostgreSQL 15 is installed on your system.
   • Python version 3.12 is available in your environment. (ONLY 3.12)

   git clone https://github.com/NUS-Project-SaBai/BackEnd/

2. Set up postgreSQL Database

   • Install PostgreSQL 15 if not already installed. https://www.postgresql.org/download/
   • Create a new PostgreSQL database for Project SaBai.
     • After launching the setup wizard, select all 4 components to install.
     • Select default location when prompted for location.
     • Remember your PostgreSQL password.
     • Open pgAdmin 4 after PostgreSQL installation.
     • Open the servers dropdown tab on the left and enter your password.
     • Right click "Databases" and go to Create > Database.
     • Enter "Sabai" as the database name and press "Save" to successfully create the local database.

3. Configure Database Settings

   Navigate to the Backend directory and create a .env file if it is not present. Copy the content from .env.example and update the database configuration settings to match your PostgreSQL database credentials. Cloudinary credentials is in the Key Credentials doc.

Activating the virtual environment

Assuming that you have successfully cloned the repository into your system and are inside the directory, the very first step is to activate your python virtual environment. This is a highly important step so as to clearly separate the dependencies of this project from those that already exist in your own system. Mixing them up can lead to some of your system dependencies to malfunction.

We will be using Pipenv. https://pipenv.pypa.io/en/latest/

Note: For Mac users, in the following commands you may have to use python3 instead of python, and pip3 instead of pip.

Run this command if you have yet to install it:

pip install pipenv

To initialise a new pipenv environment for python 3.12 (note you must already have this python version installed):

pipenv --python 3.12

To use the virtual environment, run:

pipenv shell

FYI, Don't run it. To exit from the virtual environment, run:

exit

Install dependencies

If you had exited from the virtual environment, run pipenv shell to use the virtual environment again.

To install the dependencies, run:

pipenv install

*Do this in the virtual environment

Start the server

This command will makemigrations, migrate the database, pull auth0 users, and start the server. The commands used are explained here.

pipenv run start

A localhost link will be provided for you to access the service. It will look in the command line as such:

Watching for file changes with StatReloader
Performing system checks...

System check identified no issues (0 silenced).
August 21, 2019 - 00:22:30
Django version 2.2.4, using settings 'sabaibiometrics.settings'
Starting development server at http://127.0.0.1:8000/
Quit the server with CONTROL-C.

*Make sure you set up both the Frontend AND Backend before logging into localhost.

Creating a superuser account in Django

python manage.py createsuperuser

Creating the dummy users

python manage.py create_default_users

Commands used when running the following

pipenv run start

Making migrations

This command checks the changes done and sets up the migrations to be done to the database

python manage.py makemigrations

Migrating models to PostgreSQL database

This command updates the schema of the database based on the migrations set up

python manage.py migrate

Note: Above commands from installing requirements to migrating models only need to be done once during setup.

Authentication (obtainin user accounts from auth0)

Running the following command in Backend folder will pull all the users from auth0 into Django database before starting the server. This needs to be done anytime a new user is added to auth0.

python manage.py set_auth0_users

Running the server

Running this command runs the service locally

python manage.py runserver

pgAdmin4

This can be used as a tool to view your database and check if the data is correct.

To view data tables:

1. Launch pgAdmin4
2. Navigate to your database
3. Schemas => public => table
4. Right click table and view/edit data

Offline Setup

Change the following variables in Offline Setup, IP Address should be static and refers to the FrontEnd IP Address/Port Number:

OFFLINE=True
BACKEND_API=https://192.168.1.100:3000/api/v1

Run the following command to start offline. This is very similar to the start command except it uses 0.0.0.0 instead.

pipenv run offline

Troubleshooting

1. If you have other virtual environments active (e.g. anaconda will show up as (base) ). Remeber to deactivate it using the conda deactivate command, to prevent any intereference caused by nested virtual environments.
2. Use pipenv run start instead of python manage.py runserver