SciPost

The complete scientific publication portal

Dependencies

SciPost is written in Python 3.5 using Django and requires PostgreSQL 9.3 or higher. Python dependencies are listed in requirements.txt.

Getting started

Database

Make sure that Postgres is installed and running, and that a database and user are set up for it. A good guide how to do this can be found here (NOTE: stop before the 'Update settings' part).

Python version

Make sure you're using Python 3.5. If you need to use multiple versions of Python, use pyenv.

Python dependencies

Setup a virtual environment using(py)venv, and activate it:

$ pyvenv scipostenv
$ source scipostenv/bin/activate

Now install dependencies:

(scipostenv) $ pip install -r requirements.txt

Host-specific settings

In this project, host-specific settings are defined in the scipost-host-settings.json file in the directory above the project root. The structure is as follows:

{
    "SECRET_KEY": "<change_me>",
    "CERTFILE": "none",
    "DEBUG": true,
    "ADMINS": "",
    "ALLOWED_HOSTS": ["localhost", "127.0.0.1"],
    "SESSION_COOKIE_SECURE": false,
    "CSRF_COOKIE_SECURE": false,
    "DB_NAME": "scipost",
    "DB_USER": "scipost",
    "DB_PWD": "",
    "MEDIA_ROOT": "<media_dir>",
    "MEDIA_URL": "/media/",
    "STATIC_URL": "/static/",
    "STATIC_ROOT": "<static_dir>",
    "EMAIL_BACKEND": "django.core.mail.backends.filebased.EmailBackend",
    "EMAIL_FILE_PATH": "<email_dir>",
    "EMAIL_HOST": "",
    "EMAIL_HOST_USER": "",
    "EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD": "",
    "DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL": "",
    "SERVER_EMAIL": "",
    "JOURNALS_DIR": "<journals_dir>",
    "CROSSREF_LOGIN_ID": "",
    "CROSSREF_LOGIN_PASSWORD": "",
    "HAYSTACK_PATH": "<haystack_dir>"
}

Check, double check

To make sure everything is setup and configured well, run:

(scipostenv) $ ./manage.py check

Create and run migrations

Now that everything is setup, we can setup the datastructures.

(scipostenv) $ ./manage.py migrate

Create a superuser

In order to use the admin site, you'll need a superuser.

(scipostenv) $ ./manage.py createsuperuser

Create groups and permissions

Groups and their respective permissions are created using the management command. Since users depend on the Contributor object to work properly, setup the first (admin) user using the -u and -a arguments.

(scipostenv) $ ./manage.py add_groups_and_permissions -u=<username> -a

Run development server

You are now ready to run the development server:

(scipostenv) $ ./manage.py runserver

Contributors

Users of the portal are known as Contributors and are created through the registration form accessible from the home page.

You can create a number of users, and use the admin site to give them various permissions through memberships of certain groups. For example, you'll want members of the SciPost Administrators and Editorial Administrators groups in order to access the internal management and editorial tools.

Maintaining database migratons

Every time fields in any of the models change, a database migration needs to be created and applied. The first documents a database change and its inverse, the second actually changes the database.

Make sure to commit the migration to GIT after applying it, so other developers can use them.

(scipostenv) $ ./manage.py makemigration
(scipostenv) $ ./manage.py migrate

Documentation

Project documentation can be found in docs and can be rendered using Sphinx. Note that rendering documentation is only available from the virtual environment - and only when the host settings have been configured.

To build the documentation, run:

(scipostenv) $ cd docs
(scipostenv) $ make html

After this, generated documentation should be available in docs/_build/html.