About

This is a minimalistic python app to serve semi-static pages based on flask, a WSGI web microframework.

• Jinja2 templates
• Flask-Cache for template caching
• psycopg2 (at the moment) as database backend

database.py provides a minimalistic PostgreSQL database backend to store form values, (the default form POST names are firstname, lastname, town, publicvisible (bool), campaign_info (bool) and emailaddress) Additionally all POST values are also separately stored in JSON format to allow additional form elements without changing the database structure.

Installing

python virtualenv setup

We are using a virtual python environment to not be forced to install flask globally.

To create a new virtual environment run the following in the root (this) directory:

virtualenv venv
. ./venv/bin/activate

flask modules

pip install flask Flask-Cache

database backend

For the database backend you will need also need the psycopg2 package and its dependencies (or python-psycopg2 on debian systems).

pip install psycopg2

Settings

basic settings

For the basic app settings create a settings.py file (just copy settings_sample.py). Make sure to set SECRET_KEY to a random secret key, for example (taken from the flask docs):

>>> import os
>>> os.urandom(24)
'\xfd{H\xe5<\x95\xf9\xe3\x96.5\xd1\x01O<!\xd5\xa2\xa0\x9fR"\xa1\xa8'

database

To enable the database backend:

• set a valid DATABASE_CONFIG in settings.py
• edit database.py to your URLs / template files
• import schema.sql to your database and
• uncomment import webapp.database in views.py.

cache setup

Template functions and data can automatically be cached by Flask-Cache, just set CACHE_TYPE in settings.py (and install its requirements).

Development

run_debug.py starts Flask's powerful development server on 0.0.0.0:8080.

Warning: The debug server should never be publically accessible, as it allows arbitrary code execution.

Deployment

See Flask's Deployment Options.

FastCGI example

Warning: This is just an example, FastCGI is a real PITA to debug. You most likely don't want to use this. Also, if you change any Python files, you have to restart the CGI server.

webapp.fcgi is a FastCGI wrapper for the flask application, which provides a unix socket for the webserver. Most webservers don't start/monitor FastCGI processes automatically, so it has to be run separately, we used Supervisor, but a simple start script / watchdog might also do the job.

nginx example config:

server {
    listen   80;
    listen   [::]:80 default ipv6only=on;

    server_name  wirwollendatenschutz.at;

    location / { try_files $uri @webapp; }
    location @webapp {
        include fastcgi_params;
        fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $fastcgi_script_name;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_NAME "";
        fastcgi_pass unix:/tmp/at.wirwollendatenschutz-fcgi.sock;
    }

    # serve static files directly
    location /static {
            root   /var/www/at/wirwollendatenschutz/www/cgi-bin/webapp;
    }
    location /favicon.ico {
        root   /var/www/at/wirwollendatenschutz/www/cgi-bin/webapp/static;
    }
    location /robots.txt {
        root   /var/www/at/wirwollendatenschutz/www/cgi-bin/webapp/static;
    }
}

LICENSES & COPYRIGHT

unless otherwise stated:

source code: (basically all .py files) New BSD License (see LICENSE_sourcecode)

Texts, artwork, etc...: CC BY 3.0 (see LICENSE_artwork_texts)

TODO

• use SQLAlchemy ORM instead of psycopg2 to support different database backends
• more flexible database backend
• more documentation