cccnrc / diagnosticator-server-tutorial

Diagnosticator tutorial on server

Diagnosticator Tutorial

This online-only application gives any Diagnosticator registered user the chance to try it without deploy: Diagnosticator Tutorial

If you just wanna take the tutorial you don't need to locally deploy any of this, just go there

Otherwise, if you want to modify, add, improve, etc. any aspect of the tutorial, you cane easily deploy this application locally and make your changes.

To locally deploy this version you can use Flask:

1. clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/cccnrc/diagnosticator-server-tutorial
cd diagnosticator-server-tutorial
APP_DIR=$( pwd )

2. create your Python (we suggest Python 3.9) virtual environment

python3.9 -m venv venv

3. store needed environment variables into venv, so the application loads them at any source activation (change <your-application-folder> with the pathway of the folder in which you are deploying the application: the $APP_DIR folder specified above)

echo '
export UPLOAD_FOLDER=<your-application-folder>/upload
export SERVER_ADDRESS=https://diagnosticator.com
' >> source/venv/bin/activate

note: with the above echo command you are going to append those lines to ${APP_DIR}/venv/bin/activate file: don't append different lines multiple times! If you need to change those, delete the ones you put in ${APP_DIR}/venv/bin/activate before!

4. activate your virtual environment and install requirements

source venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

note: if you find any trouble with this step this is probably due to lack of dependencies on your system. As example, PyMySQL requires your system to have (installed and running) either MySQL (version 5.6 or above) or MariaDB (version 10.0 or above). If you don't have those installed you will see that the above pip install command will fail. Similarly, PyCrypto have similar dependencies need etc. Look at the logs to identify which dependencies you are missing and fix each of them until you get the pip install command to install all packages without error.

5. create you .flaskenv file that will be automatically loaded by Flask. Here you can specify Flask variables:

echo '
FLASK_ENV=development
FLASK_APP=main.py
FLASK_DEBUG=True
FLASK_RUN_HOST=127.0.0.1
FLASK_RUN_PORT=3000
' > .flaskenv

as example, this will run Flask in:

• main.py: this simply tells Flask where is the application main file
• development mode: automatic reload at any detected changes, very useful for development!
• debug mode: lots of logs to the terminal and the browser, very useful for development as well!
• host and port: http://127.0.0.1:3000, to specify the address and port for the application

6. create the local application sqlite database:

flask db init
flask db migrate
flask db upgrade

note: next times you will need to restart the application you have to skip the flask db init command, otherwise you will be thrown an error!

7. run your Diagnosticator Tutorial local application!

flask run

Now you can access your application through your browser at http://127.0.0.1:3000 (unless you changed host/port in .flaskenv).

You can also modify whatever you think it's improvable here! Don't forget to share those changes with our community through a new GitHub branch:

git branch <your-name>-development
git checkout <your-name>-development
git add .
git commit -m "<your-name>-development ..."
git push https://github.com/cccnrc/diagnosticator-server-tutorial.git <your-name>-development

note: change <your-name> with your GitHub username or whatever other identifier you wish.

Looking forward to see these changes! 😎