indivisibleguide

A collection of tools to help realize the organizing principles from the Indivisible Guide. Data sources include:

1. ProPublica Data APIs
2. Event Registry
3. U.S. Government Publishing Office
4. GovTrack.us
5. Politifact

Setup:

• You have python installed on your computer (comes by default), as well as the following libraries:

On Linux:

sudo apt-get install python-pip
sudo apt-get install python-virtualenv

On Mac OSX (with Homebrew):

brew install python-pip
sudo pip install virtualenv

• You will need to create and activate a virtualenv for the project as follows:

virtualenv venv
. venv/bin/activate

• Then install the dependencies:

pip install -r requirements.txt

• Request an API key from ProPublica
• Request an API key from Event Registry
• Request an API key for the Google Civic Information API
• [Optional] Request credentials from Twilio and a phone number and application sid:
• Add the following to a file (either name it indivisible.cfg, or modify the path in the instructions below):

PYTHONPATH=/path/to/repo/indivisible
FLASK_DEBUG=1

• Save the API keys to the same file:

PROPUBLICA_API_KEY="PASTE_API_KEY_HERE"
EVENT_REGISTRY_API_KEY="PASTE_API_KEY_HERE"
GOOGLE_CIVIC_INFORMATION_API="PASTE_API_KEY_HERE"
...

• Install DB of choice.

On Linux:

sudo apt-get install mysql-server
sudo mysql_secure_installation
mysqld --initialize

On Mac OSX: using SQLite is easiest. If you don't already have SQLite:

brew install sqlite

• Add database URI to configs:

For SQL:

DB_ADDR="mysql+pymysql://USER:PASSWORD@localhost/indivisible?charset=utf8"

For SQLite (to write to a file in /tmp):

SQLALCHEMY_DATABASE_URI="sqlite:////tmp/indivisible.db"

• Initialize DB (note SQLite doesn't allow key constraint changes, so you may have to delete those lines):

pushd indivisible
env $(cat ../indivisible.cfg | xargs) python manage.py db upgrade
popd

How to run:

env $(cat indivisible.cfg | xargs) python indivisible/indivisible.py

Hosting your own public server:

• Set up an Ubuntu VPS ala Digital Ocean
• Run the following to set up Apache:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install apache2 libapache2-mod-wsgi python-dev
sudo a2enmod wsgi

• Clone your repo into /var/www:

cd /var/wwww
git clone git@github.com:danieltahara/indivisible.git

• Repeat setup steps above.
• Add an app.conf as per Digital Ocean instructions:

sudo vim /etc/apache2/sites-available/indivisible.conf

WSGIPythonHome /var/www/indivisible/venv/bin
WSGIPythonPath /var/www/indivisible/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName YOUR_IP_ADDR_OR_DOMAIN
    ServerAdmin YOUR_EMAIL_ADDR
    WSGIScriptAlias / /var/www/indivisible/indivisible.wsgi
    WSGIScriptReloading On
    <Directory /var/www/indivisible/indivisible/>
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
    </Directory>
    Alias /static /var/www/indivisible/indivisible/static
    <Directory /var/www/indivisible/indivisible/static/>
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
    </Directory>
    ErrorLog
    ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
    LogLevel warn
    CustomLog
    ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log
    combined
</VirtualHost>

• Add a .wsgi file:

sudo vim /var/www/indivisible/indivisible.wsgi

import os
import sys
import logging

logging.basicConfig(stream=sys.stderr)
sys.path.insert(0,"/var/www/indivisible/")

# Add your keys here.
os.environ['PROPUBLICA_API_KEY'] = "XXXX"

from indivisible import app as application
from indivisible import initialize_app
initialize_app(application)

• Enable Virtual Host:

sudo a2ensite indivisible

• Restart apache

sudo service apache2 restart

• Optionally install SSL certs using Let's Encrypt:

sudo apt-get install python-letsencrypt-apache
letsencrypt apache