capSquad Presents: ultraCast

Preview

Overview

For the full report on this project, please see this PDF

Running on CSE

Running Ultracast from CSE is simple. Simply run:

./start.sh

The script start.sh will:

* Create a python venv for the backend
* Install all required python packages in the venv
* Install all npm packages that are required for the frontend
* Launch the backend webserver
* Launch the frontend
* Open ultracast in your browser (may not work on vlab)

Once the setup is completed and UltraCast is launched you will see a message like:

Serving frontend at http://localhost:43689/

To avoid failing to launch because a port is already in use, the port which is used is decided at runtime. You can then navigate in a webbrowser to the link printed to the terminal to use UltraCast

Advanced Usage

Local Backend Instance

You can configure the frontend at runtime to use a local backend webserver for GraphQL queries instead of the remote webserver. It is highly recommended not to run UltraCast in local mode on UNSW CSE machines as the port used for the GraphQL endpoint is often already in use

To do this:

./start.sh --local

Alternative Backend Run Methods

There are two scripts which can be used to run the site's backend:

* `backend/start.sh` runs the backend in a development environment (debugging enable and with a development WSGI webserver)
* `backend/start_production.sh` runs the backend in a production environment
    * Production WSGI webserver with multiple worker processes
    * Disable debugging prints etc.

Configuration

Backend

The backend is configured by using python files which set various configuration variables. These include options including:

* The IP address of the MonogDB instance
* The MonogDB database
* Flask secret keys (for encryption)
* Algolia API key and user

Any variables that are not set are defaulted to the value in backend/config/default_settings.py. You can override these settings by writing a new python file and setting the environment variable ULTRACAST_BACKEND_SETTINGS to be the real path of this file. For example if the settings file is at ~/ultracast_settings.py, you could do:

export ULTRACAST_BACKEND_SETTINGS=$(realpath ~/ultracast_settings.py)
bash backend/start.sh

Frontend

The frontend can be configured by editing the file frontend/src/api/config.js Here you can set options including:

* The backend GraphQL endpoint to use
* Algolia API key and user