ScriptShifter

REST API service to convert non-Latin scripts to Latin, and vice versa.

Environment variables

The provided example.env can be renamed to .env in your deployment and/or moved to a location that is not under version control, and adjusted to fit the environment. The file will be parsed directly by the application if present, or it can be pre-loaded in a Docker environment.

Currently, the following environment variables are defined:

• TXL_LOGLEVEL: Application log level. Defaults to WARN.
• TXL_FLASK_SECRET: Flask secret key.
• TXL_DICTA_EP: Endpoint for the Dicta Hebrew transliteration service. This is mandatory for using the Hebrew module.

Local development server

For local development, it is easiest to run Flask without the WSGI wrapper, possibly in a virtual environment:

# python -m venv /path/to/venv
# source /path/to/venv/bin/activate
# pip install -r requirements.txt
# flask run

It is advised to set FLASK_DEBUG=true to reload the web app on code changes and print detailed stack traces when exceptions are raised. Note that changes to any .yml file do NOT trigger a reload of Flask.

Alternatively, the transliteration interface can be accessed directly from Python:

from scriptshifter.trans import transliterate

transliterate("some text", "some language")

Run on Docker

Build container in current dir:

docker build -t scriptshifter:latest .

Start container:

docker run --env-file .env -p 8000:8000 scriptshifter:latest

For running in development mode, add -e FLASK_ENV=development to the options.

Environment variables

The following environment variables are available for modification:

TXL_EMAIL_FROM: Email address sending the feedback form on behalf of users.

TXL_EMAIL_TO: Recipients of the feedback form.

TXL_FLASK_SECRET: Seed for web server security. Set to a random-generated string in a production environment.

TXL_LOGLEVEL: Logging level. Use Python notation. The default is WARN.

TXL_SMTP_HOST: SMTP host to send feedback messages through. Defaults to localhost.

TXL_SMTP_PORT: Port of the SMTP server. Defaults to 1025.

Web UI

/ renders a simple HTML form to test the transliteration service.

Adding a language as a value of the lang URL parameter, the UI will start with that language selected. E.g. /?lang=chinese will select Chinese from the drop-down automatically. The value must be one of the keys found in /languages.

Contributing

See the contributing guide.

Further documentation

See the doc folder for additional documentation.