What is Communicate all about?

Communicate is a discussion software where you can create a simple discussion forum like website with user registrations. It is designed simply and is designed to be very fast.

Software development shouldn't be something vague and complicated. It is supposed to be fun and simple. The resulting software should never be bloated and slow. It has to be simple and fast. Therefore, functional. So Communicate is an attempt at keeping the whole thing that way.

This readme might feel too conversational. But I feel it is a nice approach to write it in this manner. And also, this readme might feel inadequate at some places. I will update it as per feedback I receive. Let us begin.

How to go about setting up things and doing things?

This tutorial is for linux or linux like machines. I use python2.7 throughout the code.

I have used virtualenv to set up python virtual environment. I have used /venv/ folder to set up a python virtualenv. virtualenv isn't really needed but it keeps all the python related installations in that location and not system wide. So install virtualenv.

Install postgresql database server in your machine. Make sure it is version 9.5 or great.

After installing postgresql, open command line and enter these commands line-by-line making sure you are doing correctly every time... This command is for opening psql with default postgres user. Just typing psql while being normal user will fail because postgres user requires postgres db to open. It is extra step which postgresql people might have avoided. But it is needed for security I think.

$sudo su - postgres
$psql

Once you are inside psql, create a role and a database with your desired name. In default case, I have used communicate_role and communicate_db for role and database name respectively. Type these commands...

CREATE ROLE communicate_role WITH SUPERUSER CREATEDB LOGIN;
CREATE DATABASE communicate_db WITH OWNER communicate_role;

Come out of psql by pressing ctrl+D and also come out of postgres user by pressing ctrl+D again.

Now, once you are back again being the normal, default user, cd into /sql/ directory in Communicate repository. We are going to create tables and functions now.

Try opening psql with the latest created db and role. In my default case, I try opening psql with communicate_db and communicate_role.

$psql -d communicate_db -U communicate_role

Create tables by importing those sql files now. Type these commands...

\i create_table_query.sql
\i functions.sql
\i functions_moderator.sql

Make sure those sql statements were imported and executed without errors. If there are errors, make sure to fix them. I think an error might come when you type \i create_table_query.sql with extension uuid-ossp. It can be easily fixed by installing some extra postgres package. Any other error you might encounter, should be easily fixable.

Now, we need to create boards for the chan. In my example case, I have created two boards.

INSERT INTO boards (board, display_name) VALUES ('board1', 'Board 1');
INSERT INTO boards (board, display_name) VALUES ('board2', 'Board 2');

Now, database work is done (the basic parts at least). Now, we need to set up virtualenv inside /venv/ directory. cd into /venv/ directory in Communicate repository. Type this command below to set up virtualenv with python version 2.7

$virtualenv --python=/path/to/python2.7 .

Now, activate the virtualenv by typing

$source bin/activate

A (venv) prefix should appear in your command line. This means the python virtual environment is active now. Any result of python commands will use this folder as a base folder. So, we install the required python libraries required to run this chan by typing

$pip install -r requirements.txt

Make sure all requirements are successfully installed without errors.

Now, in case you want webm support, you might also want to install ffmpeg in your machine. Because python app will call ffmpeg to check validity of uploaded video. If you don't want webm support, comment out those lines in blobHandler.py where verify video happens and replace it with pass

Finally, rename appconfig_template.cfg to appconfig.cfg and update proper UPLOAD_PATH, DB_NAME, DB_ROLE, and hash values as required.

Now, we cd into /app/ directory and run

$python runserver.py

Communicate should be running in localhost port 5000