DGs is an open-source data management platform for development goals.
This can be used for managing data for things like Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) , National Development Plans, Sectorial Plans, Local Government Plans and more.
- A faily simple and featureful web based data management interface.
- Convenient handling of multiple development plans within a single deployment.
- Support for more than one logframe structure.
- Multilingual support.
- Users authentication and access level management.
- Full-text search capabilities.
- A poweful RESTful Application Programming Interface (API).
The platform is developed using mostly Python - Django framework. Postgresql with HStore extension is used as a primary database while Elasticsearch 5 is a default search engine.
The API is built using Django Rest Framework.
Additionally by default Redis is used for caching, Celery for asyncronous tasks processing and RabbitMQ is used as a message broker for Celery.
Elasticsearch, Redis, Celery and RabbitMQ are optional components therefore they can be replaced or disabled through some project level settings.
The source code works a most of other typical Django projects and Therefore you can always find more information on internet on how to develop and deploy projects by using Django.
Install postgresql
sudo apt-get install postgresql postgresql-contrib libpq-dev
Make sure the Postgresql server is running
sudo service postgresql start
Login as postgres (Postgresql admin user)
sudo su - postgres
While logged in as postgres create the project database
createdb dgs
Connect to the database shell
psql dgs
While you are in the database shell create the database user, grant appropriate privillages to the user and enable Hstore.
CREATE USER dgs WITH PASSWORD '<your_dbuser_password>'; GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE dgs TO dgs; CREATE EXTENSION hstore; exit;
Logout as postgres user
exit
Make sure you remember your database credentials because they are goint to be used later in your project configuration.
sudo apt-get install python-dev python-pip libz-dev libjpeg-dev libfreetype6-dev
You may need to upgrade pip
sudo pip install -U pip
Using pip install python-virtualenv and python-virtualenvwrapper
sudo pip install virtualenv virtualenvwrapper
Virtualenvwrapper is an optional but very convenient when working with python virtual enviroments especially during development. To use virtualenvwrapper you may need to make some few configurations to your system according to its documentation http://virtualenvwrapper.readthedocs.io/en/latest/install.html#shell-startup-file/ .
For example on ubuntu you may need to create or edit ~/.bashrc or ~/.profile and add the following lines
export WORKON_HOME=$HOME/.virtualenvs export PROJECT_HOME=$HOME/Devel source /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh
You may need to start a new terminal session for the above changes to take effect.
For more information on python virtualenv and virtualenvwrapper please consult the available online resources
Create a virtualenvironment for the project
mkvirtualenv dgs
Download the source code archive directly and extract its content to your working directory
OR
Move to the directory where you want to your source code to live then clone the github repository
git clone https://github.com/tehamalab/dgs.git
Go to project root
cd dgs
make sure your python virtual environment is active then use pip to install the project requirements.
pip install -r requirements.txt
Project level conigurations can be modified by using system environment variable,
using environment variables written in a file named .env in a project root or
by modifying the dgs/settings.py file directly.
For more information on django settings you can also check out https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.11/topics/settings/
Checking if things are ok
python manage.py check
Create database tables
python manage.py migrate
Create a superuser for the project
python manage.py createsuperuser
NOTE: When you are executing python manage.py ... commands make sure the vertualenv is active.
Django comes with an inbuilt server which can be used during development. You shouldn't be using this server on production sites.
To start the development server within your project root directory run something like
python manage.py runserver 8000
Now you will be able to access a site locally via http://127.0.0.1:8000
Since this is a typical Django project any standard Django deployment stack can be used. For more information on Django deployment please look for available resources on the Internet including https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.11/howto/deployment/
Most of modern Django deployments usually include a frontend web/proxy server like Nginx, an application server like Gunicorn or uWSGI and a process manager like supervisor (especially when using Gunicorn)
The project offers an API which allows building unlimited custom visualizations and data driven application.
One of the aaplications for providing a public portal based on DGs API can be found at https://github.com/tehamalab/dgs-dash