yotamha / woeip

Django App for WOEIP Air Quality Project

West Oakland Air Quality (WOAQ) project

WOAQ is a platform for West Oakland residents to collect, visualize, and act on the air quality data which affects their neighborhood.

Organizations

OpenOakland is a brigade in the Code for America network. Our mission is to bridge technology and community for a thriving and equitable Oakland. We are a welcoming and inclusive volunteer group of developers, designers, data geeks, and citizen activists who use creative technology to solve civic and social problems.

West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project (WOEIP) is an environmental justice nonprofit. Their mission is to help residents understand and influence the political and natural forces which impact their lives. WOEIP's overall goal is to empower West Oakland residents to revitalize the environment and economy of their neighborhood.

Project Description

WOEIP has collected Air Quality (AQ) data over several years. The current AQ database is difficult to interact with and manage. A team within OpenOakland has partnered with WOEIP in order to build a replacement. The project, known as WOAQ, will allow WOEIP to intuitively store, process, and visualize their data. Ultimately, this will empower local residents to drive change in their community.

How To Contribute

There are several ways to contribute to WOAQ, including product design, community engagement, project management, and engineering. A general project overview is available in the WOAQ Google Document. Current project issues and goals are organized on the WOAQ Trello board. Please review the Instructions Card before editing the Trello Board.

TODO: create a full contributing document

Reporting Security Issues

Please do not report security issues in public. Instead, please contact Tim Miller at [email protected]

Getting Started

You can quickly get up and running with the included Docker configuration.

1. Build the Docker container:

   make docker.build
   

2. Run the service locally, along with Nginx and PostgreSQL:

   make local.up
   

When running the service with this command, it will be configured to run using the code on your local machine, rather than the code built in the previous step. Additionally, the gunicorn application server has been configured to automatically reload when code is changed locally.

3. If you need to run commands inside the container, you can open a shell with the following command:

   make local.shell
   

If you would prefer not to use Docker, the project can also be run directly on your machine using pipenv. If you develop in this manner, you will be responsible for (a) installing pipenv and (b) configuring PostgreSQL.

1. Install the requirements:

   make requirements
   

2. Start Django:

   DEBUG=true SECRET_KEY=replace-me DATABASE_URL=psql://<db-user>:<db-password>@<db-host>:<db-port>/<db-name> python manage.py runserver
   

Deployment

This project is deployed to AWS Elastic Beanstalk. Travis has been configured to deploy the project with every successful build of the master branch. Deployment consists of (1) pushing the Docker image to Docker Hub and (2) deploying a new application to Elastic Beanstalk.

Manual

In the event that you need to manually deploy, you can do so as follows.

1. Ensure you have the Elastic Beanstalk Command Line Interface (EB CLI) installed:

pip install awsebcli

2. Make sure you have the access keys for an AWS user with the AWSElasticBeanstalkService policy. You can learn more about access keys and permissions at the following links:

- `Access Keys <https://docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/aws-sec-cred-types.html#access-keys-and-secret-access-keys>`_
- `Policies <https://aws.amazon.com/iam/getting-started/>`_

3. Deploy:

   AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=<key> AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=<secret> eb deploy woeip-production
   

Terraform

Rather than click around in the AWS UI, you should use Terraform to create and modify the infrastructure:

• Elastic Beanstalk application
• RDS database
• Security groups
• DNS (Route 53) configuration
• SSL/TLS certificate

Your Terraform user will need the following policies. Additional permissions/policies will be needed, if you choose to use other AWS functionality. In general, it is a good practice to give your users as few permissions as needed.

• AmazonRoute53FullAccess
• AWSCertificateManagerFullAccess
• AWSElasticBeanstalkFullAccess
• AWSElasticBeanstalkService
• ElasticLoadBalancingFullAccess

Backend Setup

Terraform uses an S3 backend to keep track of its state, and a DynamoDB table for locking, to prevent multiple users from trying to modify infrastructure at the same time. The S3 bucket and DynamoDB are themselves created via Terraform!

1. Follow the steps at https://www.terraform.io/downloads.html to download Terraform. macOS/Homebrew users can simply run brew install terraform.

2. Ensure terraform/backend_setup/main.tf has been properly configured.

3. Go to terraform/backend_setup:

   cd terraform/backend_setup
   

3. Generate an execution plan:

   terraform plan
   

4. Apply the changes:

   terraform apply
   

5. Commit terraform/backend_setup/terraform.tfstate to the repository.

This procedure only needs to be done once.

Applying Changes

Once the backend is setup, you can apply the Terraform that creates the infrastructure on which your project will run.

1. Ensure terraform/terraform.tfvars has been properly configured. See terraform/terraform.example.tfvars for an example of what should be in this file.

2. DO NOT commit terraform/terraform.tfvars to Git!

3. Go to terraform:

   cd terraform
   

3. Generate an execution plan:

   terraform plan
   

4. Apply the changes:

   terraform apply
   

Note that this process will take at least 10 minutes for the initial database setup. The SSL/TLS certificate setup may also take up to 20 minutes.

The resulting state information will be saved to S3.