A python-based drop-in replacement for Staticman

While starting my own blog on my journey from mainframe to public cloud i ran into issues when i tried to deploy and configure Staticman on Heroku.
It is quite possible that the root cause of those problems is sitting in front of the screen, but after not making any progress for 2 days i gave up and implemented my own version.

Like Staticman, the application exposes a simple REST API that accepts POST requests from github pages. The service extracts the request payload, creates a markup file in a new directory under $GITHUB_COMMENT_DIRECTORY and finally commits the file to the configured github repository.
I deployed the systemd-managed service on a Raspberry Pi.

Installation

Clone this repository and install the required packages into a .venv environment :

python3 -m venv <venv-directory>
. <venv-directory>/bin/activate
pip3 install -r requirements.txt

The 'gitpython' package depends on a locally installed git client. Install that with your package manager. Unless you already did so, create a git config file :

$ cat > ~/.gitconfig << EOT
[user]
	name = <GITHUB_ACCOUNT>
	email = <GITHUB EMAIL>
[init]
	defaultBranch = main
[pull]
	rebase = false
EOT

Edit the file

./pystatikman/config/defaultconfig.py

Variable	Value	Description
GITHUB_PAGES_URL	"https://zubeax.github.io"
GITHUB_ACCOUNT	"zubeax"
GITHUB_BOT_ACCOUNT	"zubeax-bot"
GITHUB_BOT_TOKENFILE	"./token"	relative to project root. Grants the bot account repo write-access
GITHUB_REPO_REMOTE	"https://{username}:{token}@github.com/{account}/{pagesrepo}"	don't change !
GITHUB_REPO_LOCAL	"./repo"	relative to project root
GITHUB_COMMENT_DIRECTORY	"_data/comments"	relative to GITHUB_REPO_LOCAL

Change the repository url for your Github Pages repository, your personal account and the bot account used to commit comments. The bot account requires just another sign-up at Github. Once it has been provisioned, invite the bot account from your personal account for collaboration. Done.
Using a bot account prevents any malfunction in pyStatikMan from messing with any of your other repos.

Generate an access token for the bot account (Settings/Developer Settings/Personal Access Token/Tokens (classic)). Hit the 'Generate new token (classic)' button and select the 'repo' and 'user' scopes for the token. Copy/Paste the token into the file configured as GITHUB_BOT_TOKENFILE.

Starting the Development Server

Initialize the database with

python3 ./run.py --init

then start the server with

python3 ./run.py --run

Starting the Production Server

Initialize the database with

python3 ./run.py --init

then start the server with

cd pyStatikMan
gunicorn --bind=0.0.0.0 --timeout 600 --log-level debug pystatikman:app

Configuring for HTTPS

After provisioning my own domain (smooth-sailing.net) i was able to use Let's Encrypt's Certbot CLI to create proper certificates. They are referred to in the keyfile/certfile parameters of the gunicorn start command below.

Starting as systemd service

Define a service control file

cat > /etc/systemd/system/pystatikman.service << EOT
[Unit]
Description=pyStatikMan
After=network.target

[Service]
Environment=FLASK_CONFIG=production
User=root
ExecStart=gunicorn --bind=0.0.0.0:5000 --timeout=600 --log-level=debug --ssl-version=TLSv1_3  --keyfile=./tls/privkey.pem --certfile=./tls/cert.pem pystatikman:app

WorkingDirectory=/opt/pyStatikMan/
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=30
StartLimitIntervalSec=0

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOT

then enable and start the service :

systemctl reload-daemon
systemctl enable pystatikman
systemctl start pystatikman