Official Website of CDPC, IIT Ropar

About

The following repository contains the source code of the official website of Career Development and Placement Cell, IIT Ropar.

Branches

• prod : This branch is currently deployed on the remote server. Don't make any PRs here.
• master : This is the development branch.

Directory Overview

.
├── backend
│   ├── Dockerfile 
│   ├── Dockerfile.prod
│   ├── requirements.txt
│   └── src # contains the whole backend source code
├── docker-compose.prod.yml
├── docker-compose.yml
├── _docs # documentation assets  
│   └── prod.png
├── nginx # nginx configuration to be used  
│   │        while building the production version
│   ├── Dockerfile.prod
│   └── nginx.conf
├── prod # Contains the main script which should be \
│   │        executed to clone the repo, build & start the containers
│   └── main.sh
├── README.md
└── startup.sh

Development setup without Docker

Before proceeding further, ensure that you have python3 and PostgreSQL installed on your computer! In case you don't, you can download python3 from here.

1. Clone the repo and change the directory.
2. Now install all dependencies.

pip install -r requirements.txt

The root directory should have a file named .env.example. Before proceeding to the next step, you must make a .env file and fill in all the values mentioned. Alternately, you may add all these values in your .bashrc script too.

3. Change the directory into src/.

cd src/

4. Now, run the following command to make migrations corresponding to the models in the project.

python manage.py makemigrations

5. Migrate the changes into the database.

python manage.py migrate

6. Now, run the development server with the following command.

python manage.py runserver

Head over to after build section to know about migrations, creating superuser account, compiling the stylesheets etc.

7. Congrats! Now you are all set to contribute! 🎉🎉

Development setup with Docker

The development setup with docker is pretty straightforward. All you need to do is put proper values in the .env file. It will automatically make a db admin in the postgres database based on the values in the .env file.

1. After cloning the repo, run the following command to build the container and mount appropriate volumes.

docker-compose build

2. Now start the containers with the following command.

docker-compose up

You may use -d flag to run in detach mode.

It will start the backend server at localhost:8000.

Head over to after build section to know about migrations, creating superuser account, compiling the stylesheets etc.

3. You may use the following command to stop the containers.

docker-compose down

Production Build using Docker

Here too, with docker, things are fairly straightforward. Before moving futher,ensure that you have put appropriate values in the .env file.

1. After cloning the repo, run the following command to build the container and mount appropriate volumes.

docker-compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml build

2. Now start the containers with the following command.

docker-compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml up

You may use -d flag to run in detach mode.

It will start the backend server at localhost:8000.

Head over to after build section to know about migrations, creating superuser account etc.

3. You may use the following command to stop the containers.

docker-compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml down

Scripts

startup.sh

• startup.sh is responsible for making migrations files corresponding to the models and then apply them to the database.
• It also collects the static assets and pushes them into the mounted docker volume.
• At last, it creates the superuser using the specified environment variables if there isn't any.
• Ensure that all the containers are running before using this script.
• Ideally, we should run this just after we run the containers. And we should run it once per deployment.
• We need to pass the docker compose file path, and also an optional argument --collectstatic

Example Cases:

1. Development Mode: Command to make migrations and migrate the changes without any collect static

./startup.sh docker-compose.yml

2. Production Mode: Command to make migrations, migrate the changes and collect all static assets.

./startup.sh docker-compose.prod.yml --collect-static

main.sh

• prod/main.sh is responsible for checking if the COMMIT ID of the remote repo changed. If yes, it clones the repository, builds it and starts the application.

• Ensure that there is a prod/ directory in the remote server, inside which there is main.sh file. For security reasons we are not using the main.sh file inside this directory. Rather, it needs to be manually synchronized.

• In the deploy_to_prod action, for security reasons we are not using the main.sh file inside this directory. Rather, it needs to be manually synchronized.

After Build

Migrations

Django requires you to migrate all the changes in the models.py to the database. This step is required during the initial setup and whenever there are any changes in any models.py files.

You can either go inside the container and migrate the changes. Or you can use the startup.sh script to not only migrate but also create superuser.

Compiling the stylesheets

We recently migrated all our stylesheets to sass for ease in development. Unlike css, sass cannot be understood by the browser and thus, it needs to be compiled to css. The following steps are needed to compile the stylesheets.

⚠️ Please note that all the sass stylesheets are inside backend/src/static/styles, at any point of development don't start editing css files inside backend/src/static/_styles_build

Key Points:

• Please note that incase of production build appropriate changes are already done in the Dockerfile.prod.
• You need to follow the steps incase of development only
• Before moving futher ensure that you have nodejs and npm installed.

1. Now install the sass package globally with the following command:

npm install -g sass

2. Now assuming the current directory to be the root, run the following command.

sass -w ./backend/src/static/styles/:./backend/src/static/_styles_build

3. It automatically compiles whenever you make any changes inside any of the sass files in backend/src/static/styles.

Contributing

This project is open for contribution, but we would request you to kindly open issues and comment on the discussion thread before working on anything. We also expect you to write proper documentation, which will ensure that the future team doesn't face any issues.

GitHub Action Workflows

Continous Deployment

We are using GitHub action to build the project and deploy to the remote server. Head over to Deploy Action to know more about it, and configurations setup needed for optimal functioning.

Pushing to Docker Hub

We have also setup a workflow to deploy the backend image to docker hub. Head over to Dockerhub to know more about it.