Newspapers platform

This is a webapp that makes newspapers data available to the public. Users can search and analyse collections of newspapers.

IIIF server

Installation

Install iipimage-server (https://iipimage.sourceforge.io).

Configure IIPImage as a service

Create a iipsrv.service file in /lib/systemd/system/ with the following content (modify the ExecStart path to the iip server binary):

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

[Unit]
Description=IIPImage server
After=network.target
Documentation=https://iipimage.sourceforge.io man:iipsrv(8)

[Service]
User=www-data
Group=www-data
EnvironmentFile=/etc/default/iipsrv
ExecStart=/path/to/iipsrv.fcgi --bind 0.0.0.0:9000
Restart=on-failure

The configurations of this Image server can be put in a file (/etc/default/iipsrv):

VERBOSITY=5
LOGFILE=/var/log/iipsrv.log
MAX_IMAGE_CACHE_SIZE=10
JPEG_QUALITY=90
MAX_CVT=5000
MEMCACHED_SERVERS=localhost
CORS=*
FILESYSTEM_PREFIX=/home/axel/images/

Configure web server

Add this to your nginx configuration:

merge_slashes off;
rewrite ^/iiif/(.*) /fcgi-bin/iipsrv.fcgi?IIIF=%2F$1 last;
location /fcgi-bin/iipsrv.fcgi {
	fastcgi_pass 	localhost:9000;
	fastcgi_param   PATH_INFO $fastcgi_script_name;
        fastcgi_param   REQUEST_METHOD $request_method;
        fastcgi_param   QUERY_STRING $query_string;
        fastcgi_param   CONTENT_TYPE $content_type;
        fastcgi_param   CONTENT_LENGTH $content_length;
        fastcgi_param   SERVER_PROTOCOL $server_protocol;
        fastcgi_param   REQUEST_URI $request_uri;
        fastcgi_param   HTTPS $https if_not_empty;
}

Deployment

First steps

The application runs on Ruby 3.0.1. You can install it using rvm.

  rvm install "ruby-3.0.1"

All dependencies of the project can then be installed using bundler

  bundle install

Setting up the database

You can use a standalone database or use docker for this. Create a docker container and create an empty database named "newspapers"

docker run --name newspapers_platform_database -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=secret -p 127.0.0.1:5433:5432 -d postgres

docker exec -it newspapers_platform_database createdb -U postgres newspapers`

Modify the content of config/database.yml according to your configuration.

Launch migrations to effectively create the tables: rails db:migrate

Setting up Redis and Sidekiq

Redis is used by the Sidekiq gem to keep track of background jobs. You can use docker to install it.

docker run --name newspapers_redis -p 127.0.0.1:6379:6379 -d redis

To actually start the Sidekiq process, enter bundle exec sidekiq in a new terminal. To start the web server, use rails server