Whale4 (WHich ALternative is Elected)

Whale4 is a web application dedicated to collective decision making and every day life voting. It should help you to choose collectively amongst several alternatives. For that you can create a poll (open or sealed ballots), tell people to vote, and visualize the results.

Whale4 allows you to choose amongst several preference expression modes (ordinal, qualitative, approval, numerical), and is based on voting theory to enlighten your decision.

Whale4 is a free project: you can download the source code and use it as you wish to (see license).

Whale4 can be used directly from the web application page. However, you can download the source code (modify it if you want) and install an instance of the application wherever you want. This page is dedicated to people who want to do that.

License

Whale4 is released under the General Public License, version 3.

Requirements

• python >= 2.7
• django >= 1.8
• django-bootstrap3
• pycrypto
• GNU gettext (for translation matters)
• A Database Management System (for instance Postgres) and its corresponding Python library (for instance psycopg2)

Getting Started

1. Copy whale4/secret_settings_generic.py to whale4/secret_settings.py (cp secret_settings_generic.py secret_settings.py)

2. Complete whale4/secret_settings.py with the settings concerning persistance, email server, and secret key (for data encryption).

3. Run the application using make run

4. Open the application in a web browser at http://localhost:8000/

Complete installation example under Debian GNU/Linux

Installing A Postgres Database

Install Postgres

sudo apt-get install postgresql

Create User and Database

There are different ways of creating users and databases with Postgres (see the Postgres documentation for more information). In any case, you will have to connect to your postgres cluster as a postgres user. Usually, if you do not know the password of this user, you can proceed as follows:

1. First, connect as root: sudo -s

2. Then run Postgres client as postgres user: su -u postgres psql

When you are connected, you can create a DB user using the following SQL command:

CREATE USER whale WITH ENCRYPTED PASSWORD '*********';

Then you can create the database using the following SQL command:

CREATE DATABASE whale4 OWNER whale;

Finally, you can test that your are able to connect to this database as follows:

1. log out from the database (type Ctrl-D or \q)

2. log in as follows: psql -U whale -d whale4

Installing Python3 and the required libraries

If Python3 is not installed in your machine, install it (together with pip3, which will be needed to install some libraries):

sudo apt-get install python3 python3-pip

You will also need the following packages (that you can install with apt-get or another package manager like pip for instance):

sudo apt-get install python3-django python3-crypto gettext

NB: It is possible that the version of Django that comes with your distribution is older 1.8, in which case, some parts of the application will not run. If it is the case, install django using the PyPI package manager.

If you plan to use Postgres as DBMS, also install:

sudo apt-get install python3-psycopg2

This one is not in the packages of standard GNU/Linux distributions but can be install using pip:

sudo pip3 install django-bootstrap3

Configuring application parameters

As explained above, before running the application, you will have to configure its parameters.

First, copy whale4/secret_settings_generic.py to whale4/secret_settings.py (cp secret_settings_generic.py secret_settings.py)

Then, complete whale4/secret_settings.py with the settings concerning persistance, email server, and secret key (for data encryption).

Here is an example of settings that can be used to configure a Postgres DB connection:

DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.postgresql_psycopg2',
        'NAME': 'whale4',
        'USER': 'whale',
        'PASSWORD': 'whale',
        'HOST': 'localhost',
        'PORT': '5432' # (change according to your server settings)
    }
}

(Do not forget to complete the other parts of the file as well)

Running the application

To run the application, type

make run

Then, open the application in a web browser at http://localhost:8000/.

Running the application using WSGI behind Apache

Install the WSGI module for Apache2:

sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-wsgi-py3

If necessary, enable the WSGI module for Apache2:

sudo a2enmod wsgi

Then, configure Apache to interpret your application using the WSGI module, using this documentation page for instance.

As a matter of example, you can create a file called /etc/apache2/sites-available/whale4.conf and put the following configuration statements:

WSGIScriptAlias /whale4 /var/www/whale4/whale4/wsgi.py
WSGIPythonPath /var/www/whale4

Alias /static/ /var/www/whale4/polls/static/

<Directory /var/www/whale4/polls/static>
        Require all granted
</Directory>

<Directory /var/www/whale4/whale4>
        <Files wsgi.py>
                Require all granted
        </Files>
</Directory>

Then you can enable the site using:

sudo a2ensite whale4

Finally restart your Apache2 server using:

sudo service apache2 restart

And your application should be accessible using the following URL: http://yourserver.yourdomain/whale4/