Digital Curation Manager - Frontend

This repository contains the definitions for a Flask app (subdirectory app) and React client (subdirectory client) which are used as web-frontend for the Digital Curation Manager. The Flask app

• provides means to handle authorization,
• acts as a gateway to a DCM Backend-app, and
• serves the static web-client.

The contents of this repository are part of the Digital Curation Manager.

Local install

Make sure to include the extra-index-url https://zivgitlab.uni-muenster.de/api/v4/projects/9020/packages/pypi/simple in your pip-configuration to enable an automated install of all dependencies. Using a virtual environment is recommended.

1. Change into the app-directory.
2. Install with

   pip install dcm-frontend
   

   (See this section if you prefer to build the app yourself.)
3. Configure service environment to fit your needs (see here).
4. Run app as

   flask run --port=8080
   

5. Open the client in your webbrowser at http://localhost:8080.

Development setup

During development, the Flask app and React client can be run separately. This automatically enables the npm-auto-refresh for changes in the client-code.

App

1. To start the Flask-App first change to the app-directory and configure the environment to fit your needs (see here).
2. Install the package as

   pip install -r dev-requirements.txt
   pip install .

3. Run app as

   ALLOW_CORS=1 flask run

4. Use an example command for an endpoint with command line tools like curl as, e.g.,

   curl -X 'POST' \
     'http://localhost:5000/api/auth/login' \
     -H 'accept: application/json' \
     -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
     -d '{
     "userId": "Einstein",
     "password": "8acc99eb2fceac8e027fbc1e6d60a98d"
     }'

   where the password is md5-hashed manually beforehand.

Client

1. To start the Client server, first change to the client-directory and configure the environment to fit your needs (see here).
2. To install the necessary dependencies run npm install.
3. Run client as

   npm start

4. By default the server will listen on localhost:3000.

Build

In a production environment, the static client is intended to be served via the Flask app. To perform a build of the corresponding python package, follow these steps:

1. Change into the client directory with cd client.
2. Install dependencies with npm install.
3. Run a build of client with npm run build.
4. Move the generated static website from the client/build- into the app/dcm_frontend/client-directory via

   rm -r ../app/dcm_frontend/client
   mv build ../app/dcm_frontend/client
   

5. After changing into the app-directory, build a python package by, for example, entering

   python3 generate_build_info.py  # generates a module with build-metadata (optional)
   python3 setup.py sdist bdist_wheel

After the generated package is installed, use the dcm_frontend.app_factory to create a flask-app (see app/app.py for an example).

Environment/Configuration

The two components of this repository support the following options for configuration via environment

Flask app

• SECRET_KEY [DEFAULT "020601e2d51d69e07fdbf29fd5bfa790"] secret (general-purpose) encryption key
• ALLOW_CORS [DEFAULT 0] enable CORS for development
• DEV_CLIENT_URL [DEFAULT "http://localhost:3000"] client url for CORS-requests during development
• STATIC_PATH [DEFAULT "client"] static web-client directory
• LOGO_PATH [DEFAULT null] path to logo file
• WELCOME_MESSAGE_TEMPLATE [DEFAULT "..."] python format string used on the home-page after login; format kwargs are VERSION for package version and BUILD_DATETIME for the datetime during packaging
• BACKEND_HOST [DEFAULT http://localhost:8086] host address for Backend-service
• BACKEND_TIMEOUT [DEFAULT 10] timeout duration for requests to the Backend-service in seconds
• OAI_TIMEOUT [DEFAULT 60]: timeout for single connections to oai-repositories in seconds
• OAI_MAX_RESUMPTION_TOKENS [DEFAULT 5]: maximum number of processed resumption tokens during a connection to oai-repositories

There are some advanced options for configuration available via the AppConfig-class that is passed to the app-factory. The default configuration is located in the module app/dcm_frontend/config.py.

React Client (build variables only)

• REACT_APP_API_URL [DEFAULT ""] base url for backend; when running the npm start-script, the variable is automatically set to http://localhost:5000

Contributors

• Sven Haubold
• Orestis Kazasidis
• Stephan Lenartz
• Kayhan Ogan
• Michael Rahier
• Steffen Richters-Finger
• Malte Windrath
• Roman Kudinov