Developer Documentation

Setup

• [Linux](Linux Installation)

Starting the development server

• Override Django settings in local.py and set DATABASES['default'] to the appropriate database engine. We use postgres in development and production.
• set up the database by running fab testdata - this creates and populates a test database
• Start the local django dev server via fab server and visit http://localhost:8000 in your browser. Bind to an external IP address via fab server:ip=<replace-with-your-ip-address>
• If you need access to real-time features you will need to start the sockjs server via fab sockjs
• run unit tests via fab test

Test experimenter and experiments

If you created a test database via fab testdata you should have an experimenter with the following credentials:

• Email: [email protected]
• Password: test.experimenter

After logging in you should be able to access the experimenter dashboard and register test participants.

Production deployment

We use supervisord, nginx, uwsgi, and haproxy for our production deployment. Basic scripts for this are located in the deploy directory. An improved Docker-based deployment is in the works.

Resources and Links

Python IDE

We are very grateful to JetBrains for providing open source licenses for PyCharm. PyCharm also offers a free community edition that is well worth the download.

Programming resources

• Learn to use the developer tools for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari
• In Chrome you can create multiple browser sessions for testing by creating additional users (http://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2364824). Thanks to @crbarahona for the tip.
• http://hginit.com/
• How to think like a computer scientist and learn python
• Dive into Python
• http://www.python.org/about/gettingstarted/
• http://learnpythonthehardway.org/
• http://www.learnpython.org/
• http://www.codecademy.com/tracks/python
• http://software-carpentry.org