Setting up Django

If you are new to Django, it is recommended to take the tutorial. If you have worked with Django, but not in conjunction with a virtual environment or PostgreSQL, you can use the documentation as an opinionated guide. Programmers who have a Django environment with PostgreSQL already running can skip this part.

Setting up a virtual environment

To encapsulate your project dependencies, it is recommended to use a virtual environment. A convenient way to do this is to use Conda, but any environment manager will do. For a lightweight installation in production, you should use the Miniconda distribution.

Find the installer appropriate for your distribution at http://conda.pydata.org/miniconda.html and downlaod it, e.g.:

$ wget https://repo.continuum.io/miniconda/Miniconda3-latest-Linux-x86_64.sh

Then install from the command line. If you decide to use conda update it first:

$ conda update conda

Then create a new environment for DISBi:

$ conda create -n disbienv python=3.6

Setting up the database

A DISBi app requires PostgreSQL as database backend. This section describes how to install Postgres and set up a new user and a new database that will be used to store the data of your DISBi app.

Installation with Docker (recommended)

The easiest way to set up a database is to use docker. If docker is not installed on your system you need to installed it.

1. Install Docker Engine.
2. Install Docker Compose.

Then clone the django-disbi repository:

$ git clone https://github.com/DISBi/django-disbi.git

go into the boilerplate directory and start the containers.:

$ cd django-disbi/boilerplate/db
$ docker-compose up -d

That’s it! You now have a postgres instance running on localhost:5432. By default a database with the name disbi_db is created that is accessible by the user disbi_user with password dataintegration. You change these defaults by modifying the .env file in the same directory.

In addition to to postgres, Adminer is startet on localhost:8080. Adminer is a lightweight database admin interface, so you can check what is going on in your database. You can log in with the credentials from above, specifying db as the server.

Manual installation

Note that it is not necessary, but only convenient to create the new user as a superuser.

Install compiler:

$ sudo apt-get install gcc

Install Postgres server and client:

$ sudo apt-get install postgresql postgresql-client libpq-dev

Login as postgres user:

$ sudo -u postgres psql postgres

From the Postgres shell create a new superuser:

CREATE ROLE <disbi_admin> SUPERUSER LOGIN;

And set a password:

ALTER USER <disbi_admin> WITH PASSWORD '<passwd>';

Exit the Postgres shell and create a database for DISBi:

$ sudo -u postgres createdb <disbidb>