About

This is the latest version of total-impact-core. Installing this provides the backend and API for the total-impact service. You can then build or run a frontend or consume direct from the API into your own frontend.

(Our own frontend is available at http://github.com/total-impact/total-impact-webapp.)

This isn't the deployed version -- it is an in-progress port the old codebase at http://github.com/mhahnel/Total-Impact

The deployed version is available at http://total-impact.org, and see http://total-impact.org/about for more info.

Dependencies

You may need sudo / root privileges, use if necessary

apt-get install gcc     
apt-get install python-lxml
apt-get install memcached
apt-get install couchdb
apt-get install python-setuptools

Install

This assumes you are running on a recent debian / Ubuntu based server.

Get total-impact-core code by cloning from this repo and cd into the directory. There are various ways to get code from the repo, here is one example.

apt-get install git
git clone https://github.com/total-impact/total-impact-core
cd total-impact-core

You should consider using a virtualenv too, but it is optional.

How to install:

python setup.py install

Or to install for dev:

easy_install pip
pip install -e .

Check CouchDB is available

# check couch is up
curl -X GET http://localhost:5984   # or use your web browser

CouchDB will need patched as there is a bug in couchdb regarding concurrency. Please see the details at http://code.google.com/p/couchdb-python/issues/detail?id=204 for the patch code and current bug status. It is possible this issue is already resolved on your system.

Config

Total-impact will try to contact CouchDB at http://localhost:5984/ When total-impact starts, it will, if necessary, create the database and all necessary views.

The system can be confirmed by editing totalimpact/default_settings.py Alternatively you can create a local config file such as config/local_settings.py and tell the system to use this config by setting the environment before starting

export TOTALIMPACT_CONFIG=config/local_settings.py

Any settings you define in local_settings.py would them override the settings in default_settings.py. Otherwise, the default value from default_settings.py will be used

Running

These will only work if install is successful and the CouchDB is available with proper user auth set up.

First start the backend process. This

./runbackend.py 

How to run the API and check it is up:

python totalimpact/api.py
curl -X GET http://127.0.0.1:5001/  # or use your web browser

For dev, how to run tests:

apt-get install python-nose
nosetests -v test/
nosetests -v -A "not slow" test/    # avoids slow tests

Note also that running the API as above is the first stage in making it publicly available. Follow-up should include checking that debug is set to False, then exposing the API via a web server such as NGINX. Supervisord is recommended for keeping your processes up. There are lots of different ways to do this, so we will not go into detail.

Notes for Mac

Deal with problems on OSX Snow Leopard:

1. Install homebrew.
2. Run brew install -v couchdb (The -v for "verbose" fixes a weird bug). Install will take a while, as there are big dependencies.
3. Run couchdb to start Couch. Done. You can test the CouchDB install at http://localhost:5984/_utils