Agora Ciudadana is a social web site where anyone can create or join in an agora. An agora has a set of members which can vote in the agora's elections either by direct vote or by delegating the vote.
Agora has only been tested to work in Linux-based servers so far.
-
python
-
virtualenvwrapper
-
python2.7-dev
-
rabbitmq-server
-
git
-
gettext
-
libffi-dev
-
libssl-dev
-
libxslt1-dev
-
In Ubuntu/Debian you can install the dependencies with the following command:
$ sudo apt-get install python2.7-dev python virtualenvwrapper rabbitmq-server git gettext libffi-dev libssl-dev libxslt1-dev
Other dependencies will be installed with virtualenv.
Here we will detail the most simple way to get the application running. For a more detailed explanation about how to deploy a django, refer to: http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/install/
First we need to create the virtual environment where dependencies will be installed:
$ mkvirtualenv agora-ciudadana
Now everytime we want to use the installed virtualenv, we can do the following:
$ workon agora-ciudadana
Now we will install the dependencies:
$ pip install -r requirements.txt --upgrade
After that, we need to configure the database (we use sqlite by default):
$ ./manage.py syncdb --all
And mark all migration scripts as applied (because we have created the database with --all option):
$ ./manage.py migrate --fake
We use django haystack for searching, so we need to create the initial index:
$ ./manage.py rebuild_index --noinput
Sometimes permissions are not created by django correctly. Running the following command fixes this problem:
$ ./manage.py check_permissions
We use celery and rabbitmq for programmed tasks, so you need to setup it correctly in your server. Usually you just need to install it and run it as a system daemon with:
$ sudo /etc/rc.d/rabbitmq start
In some occasions, for example if you are using ubuntu or Opensuse, the command above won't work. You need use this one instead:
$ sudo service rabbitmq-server start
And then for celery to actually process the tasks sent to it (for example start or stop an election), you need to run it as a daemon:
$ ./manage.py celeryd -l INFO -B -S djcelery.schedulers.DatabaseScheduler
That's it! Start the webserver with:
$ ./manage.py runserver
Now you'll be able to enter to Agora in http://localhost:8000
Of course this is a very simple and local installation. We recomend using a web server like cherokee, lighthttpd or apache configured to use fast-cgi and django, and a more powerful database like postgresql. Django documentation explains how to do that: http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/install/
We also refer to celery documentation for more details on how to setup them correctly in your server: http://docs.celeryproject.org/en/latest/getting-started/brokers/rabbitmq.html
Agora Ciudadana has internationalization support and is translated to multiple languages. In order to make these translations available in your installation, you need to compile the translation (.po) files:
$ ./manage.py compilemessages
To deploy agora in a production server, you need do some changes. First, you need to choose a web server: we have tested agora with apache, nginx and cherokee.
You need to edit settings (custom_settings.py) and set DEBUG=False. You also need to compile the javascript code into one single file, which is done for optimization only for production:
$ make dependencies && make all
Agora uses django-haystack with whoosh backend by default. This means that you need to run ./manage.py update_index regularly to keep the search index updated. You can do this in a nightly cron task, for example.
The settings.py file contains the default configuration for the project. You shouldn't modify it; any settings configuration you need should be added to the custom_settings.py file.
Most of the variables in settings are self-explanatory and are documented in django: http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/settings/
There are some settings non standard in django in the settings.py file, quite self explanatory, but you can ask us if you need help with them. See Contact seccion for that.
For example all the actions are geolocalized based on the user's ip address. But in order for this to work you need to first have to download the geolocalized cities data base and put it where the settings.py will look it for:
$ cd agora_site/ && mkdir -p media/data && cd media/data
$ wget http://geolite.maxmind.com/download/geoip/database/GeoLiteCity.dat.gz
$ gunzip GeoLiteCity.dat.gz
TODO: needs more detailed instructions!
To allow FNMT login you'll have to configure your server properly. You'll have to download the CA certificate from https://www.cert.fnmt.es/index.php?cha=cit&sec=4&page=139&lang=es and then convert it to PEM format:
$ openssl x509 -inform DER -in FNMTClase2CA.crt -text -fingerprint > ca.pem
We would be happy to consider any additions or bugfixes that you would like to add to the project. Please send them to us.
If you find a bug or would like to request a feature you may do so at our trello board:
https://trello.com/board/agora-ciudadana/5054e9e060d5bc9a08196b96
Note that you don't need to be a developer to be able to contribute to Agora: You can also help us adding or maintaining translations, testing the releases, improving the wiki, marketing the project. Just don't hesitate to contact with us if you want to help, your collaboration will be much appreciated.
We use Trello for managing the work in the project, using the following board where all the work we are doing and planning to do for future releases can be seen at a glance:
https://trello.com/board/agora-ciudadana/5054e9e060d5bc9a08196b96
Should you have any doubt or problem please contact us sending an email to agora-ciudadana-devel@googlegroups.com which is the development mailing list of the project. The url of the google group is: