We have created an app for a production facility that is very simple using django and python. But throughout prototyping we used Runserver command and localhost. The problem is this: We want to deploy the app without using localhost and the command line every time. The people using it wont be able to do this. It will be on implemented on one computer so it shouldnt be that challenging. The app pulls data from one database and stores data in another. It would be nice to have our own URL. Do we need to do it through wsgi? Apache? I know the problem is simple but there seem to be so many ways to deploy and many of them are overcomplicated for our needs.
Follow up question: I read that it just using Localhost isnt the best for this type of thing. Is this true?
Any help would be great
It sounds like you want to deploy the app live. So, I'd recommend using a dynamic hosting service like AWS/Azure/Firebase etc. If you want your own URL, purchase a domain, and in the configuration for the domain set up a CNAME file as well so you can redirect your domain to the live instance on the cloud.
Local host is better used for testing, and making changes without affecting the client and then you deploy/push to the cloud instance for production.
Related
Im creating a server in Python that receives POST requests, process the information in the request using some scripts (sometimes using a database) and send back a answer in JSON format. Im searching for a way to run this server and code in the cloud, in a way that i dont need my PC turned on for it to work, because my connection is very unstable.
There are a lot of web hosting companies out there, you just need to find the one that is right for you.
My personal favorite for python apps is heroku, but there are many out there. AWS is another popular one.
In future when asking questions, try to do more research before hand, and try to be more specific with questions. It would have been useful to know what kind of database you are using, or whether you're using flask or django.
I'm tasked with creating a web app (I think?) for my job that will tracker something in our system. It'll be an internal tool that staff uses to keep track of the status of one of the things we do. It should look like trello, with cards that drag from step to step. That frontend exists, but my job is to make the system update when the cards are dragged. This requires using an API in Python and isn't that complicated to grab from/update. I have no idea how to put all of this together. My job is almost completely nontechnical and there's no one internally who knows what I'm doing except for me. I'm in so over my head here and have no idea where to begin. Is this something I should deploy on Elastic Beanstalk? EC2? How do I tie this together and put it somewhere?
Are you trying to pull in live data from Trello or from your companies own internal project management tool?
An EC2 might be useful, but honestly, it may be completely unnecessary if your company has its own servers. An EC2 is basically just a collection of rental computers to help with scaling. I have never used beanstalk so my input would be useless there.
From what I can assume from the question, you could have a python script running to pull from the API and make the changes without an EC2.
First thing you should do is gather as much information about what the end product should look like. From your question, I have the feeling that you have only a vague idea of what the stakeholders want. Don't be afraid to ask more clarification about an unclear task. It's better to spend 30 minutes discussing and taking note than to show the end-product after a month and realizing that's not what your boss/team wanted.
Question I would Ask
Who is going to be using this app? (technical or non-technical person)
For what purpose is this being developed?
Does it need to be on the web or can it be used locally?
How many users need to have access to this application?
Are we handling sensitive information with this application?
Will this need to be augmented with other functionality at some point?
This is just a sample of what I would ask, during the conversation with the stakeholder a lot more will pop up for sure.
What I think you have to do
You need to make a monitoring system for the tasks that need to be done by your development team (like a Kanban)
What I think you already have
A frontend with the card that are draggable to each bin. I also assume that you can create a new card and delete one in the frontend. The frontend is most likely written in React, Angular or Vue.js. You might also have no frontend framework (a mix of jQuery and vanilla js), but usually frontend developper end up picking a framework of sort to help the development.
A backend API in Python (in Flask or with Django-rest-framework most likely) that is communicating with a SQL database like postgresql or a Document database like MongoDB.
I'm making a lot of assumption here, but your aim should be to understand the technology you will be working with in order to check which hosting would work best. For instance, if the database that is setup is a MySQL database you might have some trouble with some hosting provider.
What I think you are missing
Currently the frontend and the backend don't communicate to each other. When you drag a card it won't persist if you refresh the page. Also, all of this is sitting in your computer and cannot be used by any one from your staff. You need to first connect the frontend with the backend so that the application has persistance. Then you need to deploy this application somewhere so that it is reachable by your staff.
What I would do is first work locally to make sure that the layer of persistance is working. This imply having the API server, the frontend server and the database server running simultaneously on your computer to develop. You should then fetch data from the API to know which cards are there in the database and then create them visually in your frontend at the right spot.
When you drop a card to a new spot after having dragging it should trigger a POST request to your API server in order to update the status of this particular card (look at the documentation of your API to check what you need to send).
The server should be sending back an updated version of the cards status if the POST request was sucessful, so your application should then just redraw the card at the right spot (it won't make a difference for you since they are already at the right spot and your frontend framework will most likely won't act on this change since the state hasn't changed). That's all I would do for that part.
I would then move to the deployment phase to make sure that whatever you did locally can still work online. I would use Heroku to start instead of jumping directly to AWS. Heroku is a service built on top of AWS which manage a lot of the complexity of AWS for you. This is great for prototyping and it means that when your stuff is ready you can migrate to AWS easily and be confident that a setup exist to make your app work. You might also be tied up to your company servers, which is another thing I would ask to the stakeholder (i.e. where can I put this application and where I can't put it).
The flow for a frontend + api + database application on Heroku is usually as follow. You create a github repo for your frontend (make it private) and you create an app on Heroku that will watch this repository for changes. It will re-deploy the application for you when it sees a change at a specific subdomain of Heroku hosting. You will need to configure some procfiles that will tell Heroku what to do with a given application type. This is where you need to double check what frontend you are using since that might change the procfiles used. It's most likely a node.js based frontend (React, Angular or Vue) so head over here for the documentation of how to put that online.
You will need to make a repo for the backend also that is separate from the frontend, these two entities are distinct and they only communicate through HTTP request (frontend->backend) and JSON (backend->frontend). You will need to follow the same idea as with the frontend to deploy, head over here.
Once you have these two online, you need to create a database on Heroku. This is done by adding a datastore to your api, head over here. There are some framework specific configuration you need to do to make the API talk to an online database, but then you will need to find that configuration on the framework documentation. The database could also be already up and living on your server, if this is the case you just need to configure your online backend to talk to that particular database at a particular address.
Once all of the above is done, re-test your application to check if you get the same behavior as before. This is a usable MVP, however there are no layer of security. Anyone with the right URL could just fetch your frontend and start messing around with your data.
There is more engineering that need to be done to make this a viable end product. This leads us to my final remark: why you are not using a product like Trello, Jira, or even Github Project? If it is to save some money on not paying for a subscription I think you should factor in the cost of development, security and maintenance of this application.
Hope it helps!
One simple option is Heroku for deploy your API and your frontend application.
Back when I wanted to test my static webpages on mobile, I would set up a Local Http Server using python like.. For example, if my page is at D:/myProject/index.html, I would use command line and go to >>D:/myProject/
Then use this line,
python -m http.server
To set up localhttpserver at port 8000. Then I would access from my mobile browser like
http://192.168.XXX.XXX:8000/index.html
But I'm very new to ASP MVC Web projects and have no idea how to access it through localserver or how to set up one. Say, my project is D:/mvcProject/exampleProject.sln. I tried setting up the same way as I did on simple webprojects up to D:/mvcProject but when I access the exampleProject.sln from browser, it's showing me the codelines instead of the view.
Please do enlighten me, holy light. I, an empty cup, seek for your wisdom.
Thank you in advance!
A .sln file is for keeping together a group of projects that are part of your solution and not for defining the routing or paths. Your route that follows MVC structure is going the include your controller and a view that is tied to that controller. For example, if you have a Controller, ExampleController, and a view for that controller, ExampleDetail.cshtml,then your path will look something like:
http://localhost/Example/ExampleDetail
Please take some time to follow through an MVC tutorial, there are plenty out there.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/mvc/overview/getting-started/introduction/getting-started
https://www.tutorialspoint.com/asp.net_mvc/
Publish your MVC App in Local device.
Install IIS (Internet Information Service) from Control panel.
Host your app using Local ip.
than Browse your site in mobile from same network
I am looking for a 'sanity check' before I start working on this, as I'm new to writing server-side code. I want to stick to Python if possible, since that's what I'm used to!
I have written a desktop app (wxPython) that allows offsite employees to record their working times, the results of which they currently email to the company. I want to be able to have them save data directly to an 'online' location, from which the company can get summary data.
From what I have read (mostly here on StackOverflow) leads me to think I should do the following:
Run a database on the server with local access only (I'm favouring RethinkDB...)
Write a Python server app that can access the database but only exposes the functionality needed per user. Probably with different ports for users, payroll, and admin (me). Secure the sockets with TLS.
Add code to the desktop app to access the server.
Is this a good approach, or am I reinventing wheels and should learn to use Django or some other web framework?
As Paulo Almeida suggested in the comments making a REST application you interface with your wxPython application is probably the way to go. For this django may be a solution but it is probably an overkill microframework such as web.py, flask or bottle is enough and more easier to grasp
I am trying to mock-up an API and am using separate apps within Django to represent different web services. I would like App A to take in a link that corresponds to App B and parse the json response.
Is there a way to dynamically construct the url to App B so that I can test the code in development and not change to much before going into production? The problem is that I can't use localhost as part of a link.
I am currently using urllib, but eventually I would like to do something less hacky and better fitting with the web services REST paradigm.
You could do something like
if settings.DEBUG:
other = "localhost"
else:
other = "somehost"
and use other to build the external URL. Generally you code in DEBUG mode and deploy in non-DEBUG mode. settings.DEBUG is a 'standard' Django thing.
By "separate apps within Django" do you mean separate applications with a common settings? That is to say, two applications within the same Django site (or project)?
If so, the {% url %} tag will generate a proper absolute URL to any of the apps listed in the settings file.
If there are separate Django servers with separate settings, you have the standard internet problem of URI design. Your URI's can be consistent with only the hostname changing.
- http://localhost/some/path - development
- http://123.45.67.78/some/path - someone's laptop who's running a server for testing
- http://qa.mysite.com/some/path - QA
- http://www.mysite.com/some/path - production
You never need to provide the host information, so all of your links are <A HREF="/some/path/">.
This, generally, works out the best. You have can someone's random laptop being a test server; you can get the IP address using ifconfig.