Website for the Department of Computer Science

Christ College (Autonomous) Irinjalakuda

Setup instruction

You would need a linux system for development. Windows raises python-decouple errors. More info here.

You need Python 3.8 or above installed on your system.

Development Setup

# Clone the repository or download as zip and cd into the root folder (Department-Website)
# Terminal instructions (You're supposed run the below commands during the initial setup)

# Remove existing virtualenv module, We will let poetry install the required version
$ sudo apt-get remove virtualenv -y && sudo python3 -m pip uninstall virtualenv -y

# Install poetry
$ pip install poetry

# Install dependencies from poetry
$ poetry install

$ sudo nano .env
# add the following environment variables

DATABASE_URL = your_database_url

DEBUG = True
LOCAL_DEVELOPMENT = True
SECRET_KEY = "your_secret_key"
DASHBOARD_URL = "your_dashboard_url"
ENCRYPTION_SALT = "your_encryption_salt"
ENCRYPTION_ITERATION = your_iteration_count


PAYTM_MERCHANT_ID = "your_merchant_id"
PAYTM_MERCHANT_KEY = "your_merchant_key"

GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID = "your_client_id"
GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET = "your_client_secret"

PAYTM_PROCESS_TRANSACTION_URL = "https://securegw-stage.paytm.in/theia/processTransaction"

# Run the development server locally
$ poetry run python3 manage.py runserver 
# this should run the Django development server on your localhost:8000.
# now you can visit http://127.0.0.1:8000 and access the site.

Adding host file configuration for subdomain access in development

Production Setup

Dokku Setup

# Update and upgrade apt
$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade -y

# Fetch dokku 0.31.4
$ wget -NP . https://dokku.com/install/v0.31.4/bootstrap.sh

# Install dokku
$ sudo DOKKU_TAG=v0.31.4 bash bootstrap.sh

# Create dokku application
$ dokku apps:create department-website

# Add required buildpacks
$ dokku buildpacks:add https://github.com/moneymeets/python-poetry-buildpack.git
$ dokku buildpacks:add https://github.com/heroku/heroku-buildpack-python.git

# From the above .env file, add all the variables and their values in given format
# (Multiple variables and their values can be added at a time with spaces between each pair)
$ dokku config:add VARIABLE_NAME=VALUE

# Explicitly disable static file collection
$ dokku config:add DISABLE_COLLECTSTATIC=1

Add Github repository

Baremetal Setup

Addition Requirements:

NGINX: Webserver for handling requests and serving django assets.

Supervisor: Process management tool for keeping Django running. It also provides logging in events of unaccounted crashes and restarts the application to keep it online.

Setup procedure for Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. This will also work for all Debian/Ubuntu based distros. Procedures for other distros maybe slightly different but follows almost the same flow.

# Clone the repository or download as zip and cd into the root folder (Department-Website)

# Update and upgrade apt
$ sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

# If pip is not installed
$ sudo apt-get install python3-pip -y

# Remove virtualenv and let poetry install the required version
$ sudo apt-get remove virtualenv -y && sudo python3 -m pip uninstall virtualenv -y

# Clone the repository and cd into the folder
$ git clone https://github.com/Ryuga/Department-Website.git && cd Department-Website

# Install poetry
$ sudo python3 -m pip install poetry

# Install dependencies from poetry
$ sudo poetry install

$ sudo nano .env
# add the following environment variables

DATABASE_URL = your_database_url

DEBUG = False
LOCAL_DEVELOPMENT = False
SECRET_KEY = "your_secret_key"
DASHBOARD_URL = "your_dashboard_url"
ENCRYPTION_SALT = "your_encryption_salt"
ENCRYPTION_ITERATION = your_encryption_iteration_count

PAYTM_MERCHANT_ID = "your_merchant_id"
PAYTM_MERCHANT_KEY = "your_merchant_key"

GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID = "your_client_id"
GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET = "your_client_secret"

PAYTM_PROCESS_TRANSACTION_URL = "https://securegw.paytm.in/theia/processTransaction"

# Run collectstatic to collect static files to assets folder for production
$ sudo poetry run python3 manage.py collectstatic

# install supervisord
$ sudo apt install supervisor -y

# install nginx
$ sudo apt install nginx -y

At this point, nginx should be running.

If inbound connections are enabled for port 80, you'll be able to visit the ip with a browser which should give you the default NGINX landing page.

Supervisord configurations

add the below config inside /etc/supervisor/conf.d/gunicorn.conf

[program:gunicorn]
directory=/home/ubuntu/Department-Website
command=poetry run python3 -m gunicorn --workers 3 --bind unix:/home/ubuntu/Department-Website/app.sock core.wsgi:application
autostart=true
autorestart=true
stderr_logfile=/var/log/gunicorn/gunicorn.err.log
stdout_logfile=/var/log/gunicorn/gunicorn.out.log

[group:guni]
programs:gunicorn

Make log and output files for supervisor

$ sudo mkdir /var/log/gunicorn && cd /var/log/gunicorn

$ sudo touch gunicorn.out.log
$ sudo touch gunicorn.err.log

Update supervisor to propagate changes

# Reread supervisor configurations
$ sudo supervisorctl reread

# Update supervisor configurations
$ sudo supervisorctl update

# Check if supervisor is correctly configured. 
$ sudo supervisorctl status
# If correctly configured the application should be running with pid and shows uptime. 
# Otherwise check the configurations or logs and try again.

# In case if supervisor status shows restarting, 
# 1) Check if gunicorn is installed 
# 2) check if the log and output files exist for supervisor
# 3) check the logs and check the Django application

# In case if supervisor status shows exited quickly
# 1) check if the directory and commands in the gunicorn.conf is correct
# 2) check the application, the environment variables, database.

NGINX Configurations

add the below config inside /etc/nginx/sites-available/django.conf

server {
        listen 80;
#        listen 443 ssl http2;
#        listen [::]:443 ssl http2;
#        ssl on;
#        ssl_certificate         /etc/ssl/certs/cert.pem;
#        ssl_certificate_key     /etc/ssl/private/key.pem;
#        ssl_client_certificate /etc/ssl/certs/cloudflare.crt;
#        ssl_verify_client on;

        server_name <ip_address_or_domain_here>;

        location / {
                include proxy_params;
                proxy_pass http://unix:/home/ubuntu/Department-Website/app.sock;
        }
        location /static/ {
                autoindex on;
                alias /home/ubuntu/Department-Website/assets/;
        }   
        location /protected/media/ {
                internal;
                alias /home/ubuntu/Department-Website/media/;
        }
    
}

Once added, test if the configurations are okay and symlink with sites-enabled

$ sudo nginx -t
# If configurations are not okay, Check the nginx configuration again to see if paths added are correct

# If configurations shows okay, Symlink with sites-enabled
$ sudo ln  /etc/nginx/sites-available/django.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled

# Test nginx again
$ sudo nginx -t

# If configuration shows okay, Reload nginx
$ sudo systemctl reload nginx

# Reload supervisor
$ sudo systemctl reload supervisor

Once all the above setups are complete, we'll be able to visit the site in the domain/ip provided in the nginx configuration.