UK-Polling-Stations

This is a work in progress project that needs help in a number of ways:

1. Importing the data we have collected from councils (See Below)
2. If you are a developer (python, django, frontend, etc) or designer, we need help making the site itself.
3. If you are interested in helping us gather this data, or if you know a lot about the strange world of the UK geographic system.

If you are interested in helping out in any way at all, please contact sym@democracyclub.org.uk

Getting Started

Python

UK-Polling-Stations requires python 3.12

Install system dependencies

UK-Polling-Stations requires Python 3.12, Postgres, PostGIS, libgeos, GDAL, Node JS and NPM.

On Mac OSX, run:

brew install postgresql
brew install postgis
brew install geos
brew install gdal
brew install node

From a clean install of Ubuntu 24.04 (Noble):

sudo apt-get install postgresql-16 postgresql-server-dev-all python3-dev postgis postgresql-16-postgis-3 libxml2-dev libxslt1-dev nodejs npm libtidy-dev

For other linux distributions, see here for details on installing geospatial libraries for use with Django.

Install python dependencies

• Local Dev without CDK libs

pip install -r requirements/base.txt -r requirements/testing.txt -r requirements/local.txt -r cdk/lambdas/wdiv-s3-trigger/requirements.txt -r cdk/lambdas/wdiv-s3-trigger/requirements/testing.txt

• Local Dev with CDK libs

pip install -r requirements/base.txt -r requirements/testing.txt -r requirements/local.txt -r requirements/cdk.txt -r cdk/lambdas/wdiv-s3-trigger/requirements.txt -r cdk/lambdas/wdiv-s3-trigger/requirements/testing.txt

• Just Running Tests

pip install -r requirements/base.txt -r requirements/testing.txt -r cdk/lambdas/wdiv-s3-trigger/requirements.txt -r cdk/lambdas/wdiv-s3-trigger/requirements/testing.txt

• Update requirements Bump version in relevant requirements file, e.g. base.in then run python -m invoke requirements --upgrade.

Install front-end dependencies

npm ci

Install testing python dependencies

pip install -r requirements/testing.txt

Install testing system dependencies

We have a suite of end-to-end integration tests. We use Playwright with pytest to run these.

To set up playwright, after running pip install -r requirements/testing.txt, run playwright install. This will download the browser biniaries required for your system.

The Playwright tests will run in a headless browser as part of a normal pytest run. You may want to run the Playwright suite in headed mode for debugging purposes. To do that, run the following:

pytest polling_stations/apps/data_finder/tests/playwright/ --headed

Create local config

cp polling_stations/settings/local.example.py polling_stations/settings/local.py

Create database

sudo -u postgres createdb polling_stations
sudo -u postgres createuser dc -P -s
sudo -u postgres psql polling_stations
psql (9.3.6)
Type "help" for help.

polling_stations=# CREATE EXTENSION postgis;
CREATE EXTENSION
polling_stations=#

Update local.py

Be sure that your database user name matches To check, run: psql postgres then: \l

Run migrations

python manage.py migrate

Import initial data

Import ONSPD

For development purposes, you can use the ONSPD for geocoding. Grab the latest release from https://geoportal.statistics.gov.uk/search?collection=Dataset&sort=-modified&tags=PRD_ONSPD unzip the data and import it using:

python manage.py import_onspd --data-path /path/to/data

N.B. Path is to data directory which contains the csv, not the csv itself.

Import Councils

python manage.py import_councils --import-old-boundaries

Import some Polling District/Station data

For development purposes, you will need to seed your database with some data. We depend on Ordnance Survey Addressbase Plus, which is not publicly available. To allow open source contributions we have prepared the sample data Ordnance Survey provide (https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/business-government/products/addressbase-plus#sample-data) ready for import, and some sample import scripts for testing.

To prepare your database run the following commands:

./manage.py import_cleaned_addresses test_data/addressbase/
./manage.py create_uprn_council_lookup
./manage.py import_uprn_council_lookup uprn-to-councils.csv

You can clean up the look up with:

rm uprn-to-councils.csv

And finally you can import some dummy data with:

./manage.py import_fake_teignbridge
./manage.py import_fake_exeter

Importing the data we have from councils

Each council that has unimported data has a Github Issue with the Data Import label.

We make a Django manage.py command in the data_importers app for each council which imports the raw data. If you are interested in helping the project by writing an import script, see the issues tagged recommended for beginners for more info.

Welsh Language translations

django-admin makemessages -l cy --ignore='env*'
./manage.py compilemessages

Install git hooks

If you like you can use the commit hooks defined in .pre-commit-config.yaml. Run pre-commit install && pre-commit install -t pre-push.

Custom council domains

If a user requests access to the council uploader using a custom domain, the domain should be added to the CUSTOM_DOMAINS setting. To remove a custom domain, follow these steps:

1. Delete the entry from the CUSTOM_DOMAIN list in polling_stations/settings/constants/uploads.py
2. In the admin panel, delete the UserCouncil object from the bottom of the Council profile page

Election season

As part of preparations for upcoming elections, NEXT_CHARISMATIC_ELECTION_DATES will need to be updated in settings/constants/elections.py. This var takes a ["YYYY-MM-DD",] format.

To show messaging about the 2022 GB voter ID legislation, update SHOW_GB_ID_MESSAGING to True in settings/constants/elections.py.

API

This project has an API, however it's not designed for public consumption.

To authenticate against the API you need to pass a token in the auth_token GET parameter.

The main API endpoints are postcode and address. These endpoints return polling station information for the given location.

In turn, they request the EveryElection API.

sequenceDiagram
    AggregatorAPI ->> WDIV: Call from Aggregator API
    WDIV ->> EE: WDIV calls EE to see if there are elections
    EE ->> WDIV: Election data returned
    WDIV ->> AggregatorAPI: Return polling station and election data to AggregatorAPI

Loading

This workflow is the same for the postcode and address endpoints.

The documentation for the AggregatorAPI should explain the main concepts for this API.

API development documentation

We use drf-spectacular to document the API.

The documentation is inline with the code, meaning that comments and annotations should be enough in most case to understand what's going on. drf-spectacular comes with some views for Redoc and Swagger. To enable these, set ENABLE_API_DOCS=True in local.py and visit http://localhost:8000/api/swagger/ or http://localhost:8000/api/docs/.

Adding tokens

There are two types of token:

• READ_ONLY_API_AUTH_TOKENS
• SUPERUSER_API_AUTH_TOKENS

Both are lists that are defined in settings. To add a token, add a string to the correct list, or set environment variables as comma seperated values.

Superuser API tokens are designed for the Trigger function that posts information about newly updated files back to the uploads app.

Read only tokens are for the workflow outlined above.