caesar2164 / edx-certificates

The code edX uses to generate certificates

edx-certificates

This is the code we use the generate certificates at edX.

Generate edX certificates

This script will continuously monitor an xqueue queue for the purpose of generating a course certificate for a user.

Generating sample certificates

1. Create a new python virtualenv

mkvirtualenv certificates

2. Clone the certificate repo

git clone [email protected]:edx/edx-certificates

3. Clone the internal certificate repo for templates and private data (optional)

git clone [email protected]:edx/edx-certificates-internal

4. Install the python requirements into the virtualenv

pip install -r edx-certificates/requirements.txt

5. In order to generate sample certificates that are uploaded to S3 you will need access to the verify-test bucket, create a ~/.boto file in your home directory

[Credentials]
aws_access_key_id = *****
aws_secret_access_key = ****

Or for edX use the boto.example in the edx-certificates-interal repo:

cp edx-certificates-internal/boto.example ~/.boto

6. Set an environment variable to point to the internal repo for certificate templates

export CERT_PRIVATE_DIR=/path/to/edx-certificates-internal

7. In the edx-certificates directory generate a sample certificate:

cd edx-certificates
python create_pdfs.py -c some/course/id -n Guido

some/course/id should be a valid course id found in `edx-certificates-internal/cert-data.yml

Overview

The certificate_agent.py script will continuously monitor a queue for certificate generation, it does the following:

• Connect to the xqueue server
• Poll for a single certificate request
• If it finds one, it:
  • Processes the request
  • Post a results json back to the xqueue server

A global exception handler will catch any error during the certificate generation process and post a result back to the LMS via the xqueue server indicating there was a problem.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help         show this help message and exit
  --aws-id AWS_ID    AWS ID for write access to the S3 bucket
  --aws-key AWS_KEY  AWS KEY for write access to the S3 bucket

Generation overview

TODO

Logging:

Logging is setup similar to Django logging, logsettings.py will generate a configuration dict for logging where in a production environment all log messages are sent through rsyslog

Tests:

To run the test suite:

1. Configure your credential information in settings.py. You will need to specify:

    CERT_KEY_ID = # The id for the key which will be used by gpg to sign certificates
    CERT_AWS_ID = # Amazon Web Services ID
    CERT_AWS_KEY = # Amazon Web Services Key
    CERT_BUCKET = # Amazon Web Services S3 bucket name
   

   It is also acceptable to leave the AWS KEY and ID values as none and instead use .boto file or run this code from a server that has an IAM role that gives it write access to the bucket in the configuration.

2. To run all of the tests from the certificates directory, run:

    nosetests
   

   These are more integration tests than unit tests, and will be exercising your certificate configuration, your file pathing, and your S3 credentials. Some tests may fail, but the code may still be working properly; you'll have to investigate to discover what the failed test is diagnostic of. To run just the tests for local on-disk publishing run:

    nosetests tests.gen_cert_test:test_cert_gen
   

Troubleshooting: If tests fail with errors, try running:

pip install -r requirements.txt

to install necessary requirements.

In addition, you must install gpg. See gnugp for instructions.