Easy installer documentation¶

This is a quick guide to setting up a new metadata registry based on the Aristotle Metadata Registry framework using the easy installer.

Such a server should be considered for demonstration purposes, and deployment should be done in accordance with the best practices and specific requirements of the installing agency.

For more information on configuring a more complete installation review the help article Integrating Aristotle-MDR with a Django project.

Make sure you have a server setup for hosting the project with an appropriate WSGI web server configured. If the server is only used for development, the inbuilt django server can be accessed by running the ./manage.py runserver command.

PythonAnywhere also provides a free python server suitable for development and low traffic sites.
(Optional but recommended) Configure a virtualenv for your server, so that the dependancies for Aristotle-MDR do conflict any other software you may be running. If you are running Aristotle on an isolated server with root privileges you may skip this step.

For PythonAnywhere, information is available on installing virtualenv and configuring a new virtualenv.
Next install the Aristotle Metadata Registry package. This can be done using pip with the following command pip install aristotle-metadata-registry. If you already have a version installed your can update with pip install -U aristotle-metadata-registry
To run the easy installer simply run aristotle-installer from the command line. There are a number of command line arguments that are explained in the help documentation which can be accessed from the command line:
```
``aristotle-installer --help``
```
To install your registry in a different directory use the –dir option python install.py --dir ./myregistry

This installer will setup an example registry, and will prompt you for a new name, ask for a few additional settings, install requirements, setup a database and collect the static files.
If required, browse to the directory of your project that was named in the above directory, and edit the settings.py files to meet your requirements. Although the installer generates a pseudo-random hash for the SECRET_KEY, It is strongly recommmended you generate a fresh SECRET_KEY. Also consider which customisations to implement using the options in the ARISTOTLE_SETTINGS dictionary - details of which can be found under Configuring the behavior of Aristotle-MDR.

The example registry includes commented out lines for some useful Aristotle-MDR extensions. If you wish to use these, remove the comments as directed by the documentation in settings.py.
If you are using a WSGI server (such as PythonAnywhere) you’ll need to either point your server to the projects wsgi.py file or update your WSGI configuration.

For more information on configuring the PythonAnywhere WSGI server review their documentation.
Start (or restart) the development server and visit its address. In the case of a local development server this will likely be 127.0.0.1.

Using a different database¶

The easy installer using a simple SQLite database for storing content, however for large scale production servers with multiple concurrent users this may not be appropriate. Django supports a wide range of database server which can be used instead of SQLite. However to the very specific nature of the options required to connect to a database, to use an alternate database with the easy installer a few additional steps are required.

Let the installer run to completion, without the --dry option, and selecting yes when asked Ready to install requirements? (y/n):.
Edit your settings.py file and add a variable DATABASES set to connect to your database as described in the Django documentation.
Remove the pos.db3 file that will have been created during the installation. This file is the name of the default SQLite database and can be safely deleted without any issues.
Call the Django migrate command again using the updated settings:
```
./manage.py migrate
```
Start (or restart) the development server and visit its address. In the case of a local development server this will likely be 127.0.0.1.

Disabling the DEBUG options¶

Because of the The easy installer using a simple SQLite database for storing content, however for large scale production servers with multiple concurrent users this may not be appropriate. Django supports a wide range of database servers which can be used instead of SQLite. However to the very specific nature of the options required to connect to a a database, to use an alternate database with the easy installer a few additional steps are required.

Let the installer run to completion, without the --dry option, and selecting yes when asked Ready to install requirements? (y/n):.
Edit your settings.py file and set the DEBUG to False::

DEBUG=False
Remove the pos.db3 file that will have been created during the installation. This file is the name of the default SQLite database and will have a number of example objects and users created within it as the migrate step when DEBUG is set to True.
Call the Django migrate command again using the updated settings:
```
./manage.py migrate
```
Start (or restart) the development server and visit its address. In the case of a local development server this will likely be 127.0.0.1. To access the administators sections of the site you will need to create a super user.

Creating a superuser for the registry¶

Creating a superuser is covered in more depth in the Django documentation, however a quick guide is given here. These steps assume a valid database exists and has been appropriately set up with the Django migrate command.

To create a super user, browse to the project folder and run the command:

$ django-admin createsuperuser

This will prompt you for a username, email and password.

A username and email can be applied with the --username and --email switches respectively. For example:

$ django-admin createsuperuser  --username=my_registry_admin --email=admin@registry.example.gov