fzerocentral-api

Data API for the (upcoming) F-Zero Central website. Uses the Django web framework.

Installation for development environments

• Ensure you have the following installed:
  • Python 3.10.x
  • PostgreSQL 10 or higher (see below section for a sample PostgreSQL setup)
  • On Ubuntu, the following apt packages: python3.10-dev, python3.10-venv, libpq-dev
• git clone this repository.
• Set up a virtual environment and install Python packages there:
  • Create a virtual environment at the directory of your choice (can be outside of the repository): python3.10 -m venv <path/to/environment>
  • Activate your environment: source <path/to/environment>/bin/activate on Linux, <path/to/environment>/Scripts/activate on Windows.
  • If on Linux, run pip install wheel
  • Run pip install -r requirements/development.txt to install packages to your environment. Ensure that there are no installation errors.
• Create an .env file at the root of this repository. Specify configuration variable values in this file, using the .env.dist file as a template.
• Set an environment variable to specify you're using the 'development' settings module. export DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=config.settings.development on Linux, set DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=config.settings.development on Windows.
• Run python manage.py migrate to create the database schema.

Sample PostgreSQL setup (Ubuntu)

• sudo apt install postgresql
• sudo -u postgres psql to enter the psql shell with the newly-created Linux user postgres, which is tied to the default PostgreSQL user postgres.
• On the psql shell:
  • CREATE USER django WITH PASSWORD 'mypassword'; replacing mypassword with the DATABASE_PASSWORD set in your .env file.
  • ALTER ROLE django SET client_encoding TO 'utf8'; - this and the following two commands are for optimizing Django's connections to PostgreSQL.
  • ALTER ROLE django SET default_transaction_isolation TO 'read committed';
  • ALTER ROLE django SET timezone TO 'UTC';
  • CREATE DATABASE mydatabase; replacing mydatabase with your DATABASE_NAME.
  • GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE mydatabase TO django;
  • \q to exit the psql shell.
• If you've got your Python environment all set up, you can run python manage.py dbshell to test entering the psql shell through Django's settings. Then run \c on the psql shell to confirm the user and database names.

Running the development server

• Set the environment variable to specify your settings module (see above).
• Activate your virtual environment (see above).
• From the project directory, run: python manage.py runserver
  • You can specify a port number after runserver to serve the API at that port.
• The website should be served at your localhost address. For example, if it's 127.0.0.1:8000, try visiting http://127.0.0.1:8000/games in your browser.

Running the unit tests

• Set the environment variable to specify your settings module (see above).
• Activate your virtual environment (see above).
• From the project directory, run: python manage.py test

Miscellaneous developer tips

• When using the PyCharm IDE, if many import statements such as from games.models import Game are getting red-underlined, try right-clicking the project directory, and choose Mark Directory as -> Sources Root.
• Firefox may not know how to display responses of the content type application/vnd.api+json. One add-on that can help with this is JSON Lite.