Overview

The API endpoint is deployed here: https://heroku-article-production.herokuapp.com/

How can AI make it easier to assemble structured journalism articles? Machines are no substitute for the insight and creativity of a trained journalist. But perhaps AI can assist with simple tasks that remove tedium and make production easier. This team will attempt to build an AI capable of assisting a journalist in quickly producing structured journalism content.

Key Team Skills

Collectively, the team must have the following skill:

1. MongoDB
2. Flask or Django
3. Heroku
4. GitHub CI/CD
5. Behavior trees
6. Postman

Roles and Responsibilities

1. (1) Content developer-- Create Python functions that query MongoDB for the raw content needed for article production.
2. (1) Bot developer-- Work with structured-journalism experts to determine simple assistant tasks. Use Flask or Django to build behavior trees that can perform simple structured journalism assistant tasks. Expose the funcationality as APIs.
3. (1) Platform and API developer-- Automate deployment from GitHub to Heroku. Use Postman to build API test cases for the bot and to demonstrate working functionality.

How to setup the Heroku API endpoint

Setting up Heroku and Github Secrets

1. Create a Heroku account - you will need a heroku account to setup the API endpoint through a hosted heroku app. Create your account through the heroku site: https://www.heroku.com/
2. Create a Heroku app - once created take note of the following variables so that you can replace the github secrets found in the yml file found in the repository.
   • Heroku Email - the email address used for the Heroku account used to create the app.
   • Heroku App name - the name of the Heroku app you just created.
   • Heroku App key - the API key for the Heroku app you just created.
3. Setup Github Secrets - with the following variables noted above you will have to set them within your own Github repository secrets settings. The created secrets should be assigned the following names.
   • HEROKU_EMAIL - to be set to the noted Heroku email.
   • HEROKU_APP_NAME - to be set to the noted Heroku app name
   • HEROKU_API_KEY - to be set to the noted Heroku API key

Setting up Heroku Addons

4. Get the Heroku Redis Add-on - this will be required for your Heroku web components to enqueue tasks for your Heroku worker component to process them.

Setting up MongoDB

5. Create a MongoDB account - this account will be used to create the Databases. Create and login here: https://www.mongodb.com/
6. Create the Following Databases
   • Snippet_DB - this database will be used in the mongo connection string for the web component in your Heroku App.
   • News_Article_DB - this database will be used in the mongo connection string for the worker in your Heroku App.
7. Create a User with Database Access - this user will be used in the mongo connection string.

Setting up the Heroku Config Variables

8. Set the Redis URI - take the Heroku Redis add-on URI link and set it in the config variables within your Heroku application.
   • REDIS_URL - set the Redis URI to this name within the config vars.
9. Get the two Mongo Connection Strings - take note of the 2 connection strings and set them to the following variables in the setting of your Heroku application within the config vars option (Show Config Vars).
   • WEB_MONGO_SNIPPET_DB - set the name of this config var to the Mongo connection string that references the Snipper_DB.
   • WORKER_MONGO_ARTICLES_DB - set the name of this confic var to the Mongo conneciton string that references the News_Article_DB.

• *It is a good practice to hide database connection strings, and if you look into the code you will notice the two config variables being set.

10. Setup Elasticsearch - create an account and take note of the password. Then set another pair of config variables in your Heroku application.
    • ELASTIC_API - which is used the API key used to connect to your Elasticsearch function.
    • ELASTIC_USER - which is the username used to access your Elasticsearch endpoint.
    • PASS_ELASTIC - which is the password that you set to access your Elasticsearch endpoint.