Secret Service Chart Server

Version: 0.1.0

Authors: Ryan McGowan, Boyan Alexandrov and Josh Spector

Description

Secret Service Chat Server (SSCS) is the server-side application for our CSE 651 project. The server is an endpoint for clients to store and access encrypted messages.

This project uses semantic versioning.

Technologies Used:

• Python
  • Flask
• MongoDB

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Setup

Web Application (Python/Flask) Setup

This application is compatible with Heroku/cedar. See the Heroku website for instructions on how to deploy a Python - Flask app to Heroku.

To get the app running locally you just need to run a few commands. (Most of these are covered in the Heroku instructions referenced above).

1. Install pip on your computer (if it isn't already installed). This may change depending on your distribution, so you might want to look this up on your own.

   Since Flask is not compatible with Python 3 you should make sure that your pip excutable is using Python 2.x not Python 3.x. On Arch Linux this means you have to run 'pip-2.7' instead of 'pip'.

2. Install virtualenv

   $ pip install virtualenv
   

   You might need to run the above command as sudo depending on your setup.

3. Setup and initialize virtualenv.

   $ cd /path/to/this/project/
   $ virtualenv env
   $ source env/bin/activate
   

   If you are using bash you can replace the last command with:

   $ . env/bin/activate
   

4. Install Flask and other dependencies.

   $ pip install -r requirements.txt
   

5. Before we can run the application we must make it aware of the database. Copy the config-example.yml file to config.yml with the following commands and edit it accordingly. NOTE: Pay attention to what python database adapter you use. You might have better luck using different ones on your system

   $ cp config-example.yml config.yml
   $ $EDITOR config.yml
   

   Installing on heroku requires that all of your files on the heroku server being controlled by git. That means you would have to version control your config.yml file. This can be a security issue. Since this is the case you can also configure the application with environment variables.

6. Once that's done you can now either use the application:

   $ python web.py
   

   Or if you have foreman installed (gem install foreman):

   $ foreman start web