UK-Polling-Stations

This is a work in progress project that needs help in a number of ways:

1. Importing the data we have collected from councils (See Below)
2. If you are a developer (python, django, frontend, etc) or designer, we need help making the site itself.
3. If you are interested in helping us gather this data, or if you know a lot about the strange world of the UK geographic system.

If you are interested in helping out in any way at all, please contact sym@democracyclub.org.uk

Getting Started

Python

UK-Polling-Stations requires python 3.4 or 3.5

Install system dependencies

UK-Polling-Stations requires Python 3, Postgres, PostGIS, libgeos, GDAL, Node JS and NPM.

On Mac OSX, run:

brew install postgresql
brew install postgis
brew install geos
brew install gdal
brew install node

From a clean install of Ubuntu 14.04 (Trusty):

sudo apt-get install postgresql-9.3 postgresql-server-dev-9.3 python-psycopg2 python3-dev postgis postgresql-9.3-postgis-2.1 libxml2-dev libxslt-dev nodejs npm

sudo ln -s /usr/bin/nodejs /usr/bin/node

or on Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial):

sudo apt-get install postgresql-9.5 postgresql-server-dev-9.5 python-psycopg2 python3-dev postgis postgresql-9.5-postgis-2.2 libxml2-dev libxslt1-dev nodejs npm

sudo ln -s /usr/bin/nodejs /usr/bin/node

For other linux distributions, see here for details on installing geospatial libraries for use with Django.

The API docs rely on drafter for parsing API Blueprint. On OSX this can be installed using

brew install --HEAD https://raw.github.com/apiaryio/drafter/master/tools/homebrew/drafter.rb

On Ubuntu, this needs to be installed/compiled manually:

wget https://github.com/apiaryio/drafter/releases/download/v3.2.7/drafter-v3.2.7.tar.gz
tar xvzf drafter-v3.2.7.tar.gz
cd drafter-v3.2.7
./configure --shared
make libdrafter
sudo cp build/out/Release/lib.target/libdrafter.so /usr/lib/libdrafter.so
sudo cp src/drafter.h /usr/include/drafter/drafter.h

Install python dependencies

pip install -r requirements/base.txt

Install front-end dependencies

npm install

Install testing dependencies

The integration tests require PhantomJS to be installed globally.

On Mac OSX, this can be installed by running

brew install phantomjs

On Ubunutu, run:

sudo npm install -g phantomjs-prebuilt

Install testing requirements

pip install -r requirements/testing.txt

Create local config

cp polling_stations/settings/local.example.py polling_stations/settings/local.py

Create database

sudo -u postgres createdb polling_stations
sudo -u postgres createuser dc -P -s
sudo -u postgres psql polling_stations
psql (9.3.6)
Type "help" for help.

polling_stations=# CREATE EXTENSION postgis;
CREATE EXTENSION
polling_stations=#

Run migrations

python manage.py migrate

Import initial data

Import Councils

python manage.py import_councils

Import some Polling District/Station data

For development purposes, you will need to seed your database with some data. Most of our import scripts reference data is hosted privately, but there are a number of councils who publish their data at a public location.

For example:

• python manage.py import_barrow_in_furness
• python manage.py import_canterbury
• python manage.py import_doncaster
• python manage.py import_dover
• python manage.py import_dundee
• python manage.py import_eden
• python manage.py import_edinburgh
• python manage.py import_epsom_and_ewell
• python manage.py import_fife
• python manage.py import_guildford
• python manage.py import_hastings
• python manage.py import_lancaster
• python manage.py import_salford
• python manage.py import_shepway
• python manage.py import_thanet
• python manage.py import_tonbridge
• python manage.py import_tunbridge_wells
• python manage.py import_wolverhampton

all reference data which is publicly available.

Importing the data we have from councils

Each council that has unimported data has a Github Issue with the Data Import label.

You can see the current status in the Waffle Board.

We make a Django manage.py command in the data_collection app for each council which imports the raw data. If you are interested in helping the project by writing an import script, see the issues tagged recommended for beginners for more info.