Canteen Web Backend

Getting started

Installing bower packages

Change to the canteen_web/canteen_browser directory and run:

$ bower install

Setting up virtualenv

The first time after cloning the repository, create the virtualenv:

$ virtualenv -p python3 venv

Then enter the virtual environment (you'll need to do this in any fresh shell before running the application or using pip):

$ . venv/bin/activate

And finally, install the required packages:

$ pip install -r requirements.txt

Installing PostgreSQL+PostGIS

canteen-web requires PostgreSQL and PostGIS since we use PostGIS-specific functionality. On Debian Jessie, I did roughly the following:

1. Installed postgresql and postgis
2. sudo -u postgres createuser austin
3. sudo -u postgres createdb -O austin canteen
4. sudo -u postgres psql canteen <<<'CREATE EXTENSION postgis' (because only superusers can create extensions)

I then wrote the following as my [db] section in config.ini (see below):

[db]
engine=postgresql
name=canteen

Django project

Before going any further, in canteen_web, you must copy config.example.ini to config.ini and update the [db] and [gmaps] sections as needed. Next, do one of the following:

Option 1: init.sh

Run init.sh, which will do some setup for you:

$ ./init.sh

Option 2: By hand

Append a new secret key to config.ini:

$ printf '\n[secrets]\nsecret_key = ' >>config.ini
$ python3 -c "import os, string; pop = string.ascii_letters + string.punctuation + string.digits; print(''.join(pop[int(x/256 * len(pop))] for x in os.urandom(512)))" >>config.ini

Now, run the following to initialize the SQLite database:

$ ./manage.py migrate

Load the default groups into the database:

$ ./manage.py loaddata groups

And then create an initial administrator:

$ ./manage.py createsuperuser

Optionally, then collect the static files for production:

$ ./manage.py collectstatic

Running a development server

Run

$ ./manage.py runserver

And visit http://localhost:8000/.

Deployment

Follow the steps above (including the virtualenv step) and then change the host key in the [production] section of config.ini to the allowed values for the Host header as described below. This will disable debug mode.

Now, start the uwsgi server:

$ ./run.sh

Next, you'll need to configure your HTTP server to serve the static files directory at /static/ and proxy / to the uwsgi server. I use nginx configuration roughly along the lines of the following:

server {
        listen 443 ssl;
        listen [::]:443 ssl;

        server_name canteen-water.org www.canteen-water.org;

        location / {
                uwsgi_pass unix:///path/to/canteen/canteen_web/sock;
                include uwsgi_params;

        }

        location /static/ {
                alias /path/to/canteen/canteen_web/static/;
        }
}

Notice that it accepts only HTTPS connections. This is intentional — the client currently sends passwords in plaintext with every request, so using straight HTTP should be avoided at all costs. A Let's Encrypt certificate is free and supported by Java starting with 8u101, so I use one.

Configuration

See canteen_web/config.example.ini, which you should copy to canteen_web/config.ini and change as needed.