Well, this week is kind of a very tiresome week for me because I needed to spend lot of time trying to grasp the correct process which I need to follow in integrating the styles I have coded, to the testing instance of AskFedora. So, here goes my update on the project.
Basically I have set up the testing repository for AskFedora in Openshift. The source for testing can be cloned from the git repository here.
Basically the first step you need to follow is having Openshift client (rhc) installed in your PC. We can install rhc by typing in the following command in the terminal:
$ sudo gem install rhc
Then the following command run the setup that will create a config file and and ssh keypair:
$ rhc setup
And then you need to add the ssh key and start the ssh agent by:
$ ssh-all ~/.ssh/id_ras
$ ssh-agent
When setting up the testing instance in Openshift you need to go to www.openshift.com and create a new DJango based application using the source given in the above mentioned git repository. And then you need to ssh into your repository on Openshift typing the command:
rhc ssh your_application_name
on your terminal if you are using Linux or on command line if you are using Windows. Then you will be directed to Openshift and from there it's like working on another remote machine from your own computer. I have explored the file structure and directories on Openshift and yeah it is just like you own another computer on which you can work. (of course on a terminal though with no graphical user interfaces :P)
And then you need to go to app-root/repo/asgi/askbot_devel directory from the terminal and there you need to type in the following commands:
python manage.py syncdb
python manage.py migrate
python manage.py collectstatic
Well it's quite trouble when we need to type in the above commands each time we deploy a new instance. And there is a way in not having to do so each time. This is how I was able to do that:
Inside the .openshift -> action_hooks directory I created a deploy script with the following entries:
#!/bin/bash
echo "Executing 'python ${OPENSHIFT_REPO_DIR}wsgi/askbot_devel/manage.py syncdb --noinput'"
python "$OPENSHIFT_REPO_DIR"wsgi/askbot_devel/manage.py syncdb --noinput
echo "Executing 'python ${OPENSHIFT_REPO_DIR}wsgi/askbot_devel/manage.py migrate --noinput'"
python "$OPENSHIFT_REPO_DIR"wsgi/askbot_devel/manage.py migrate --noinput
echo "Executing 'python ${OPENSHIFT_REPO_DIR}wsgi/askbot_devel/manage.py collectstatic --noinput'"
python "$OPENSHIFT_REPO_DIR"wsgi/askbot_devel/manage.py collectstatic --noinput
so that on every deploy, it executes this deploy script and get the work done without me having to ssh and type the commands.
Now the application will run on Openshift just fine.
My first naive approach towards integration :P
Okay the first way I followed in integrating my styles with the test instance is quite naive I should say. What I did was I ssh into Openshift repository and explored the directory structure and found out that when installing dependencies askbot latest version is fetched and installed in the directory app-root/runtime/dependencies/python/virtenv/lib/python2.7/site-packages. Then studied the structure of askbot as well and located where the template html files and the styles are in. The html templates of askbot are inside the directory called "templates" and all the css, less, javascript and image files are inside the "media" directory of askbot.
All the templates for pages in askbot extends the "base.html" file and then the "two_column_body.html" file. Basically these pages include many other html files such as header.html, secondary_header.html etc. Because of this structure it is very easy to identify the places where we need to access in order to do a change. Hence maintaining such an instance is quite easy because of the modularity of code. And also I found out that the most of the styles of askbot is included in the "style.css" file which is inside media/style directory. It also has an associated "style.less" file.
At first I tried to integrate my styles directly to the askbot repository located at app-root/runtime/dependencies/python/virtenv/lib/python2.7/site-packages which became a quite hectic process as I needed to work on Openshift using the nano editor through the terminal. And bit later I got to know that I was following the wrong method in integrating my styles with askbot and whatever the changes that I should be doing must be done in my local repo and it should be committed and pushed to Openshift to get the expected outcome. Well that was good lesson I learnt. Basically that is why frameworks are there right? Frameworks help up to do things the easier way. So, what I need to do is finding how templates and styles of askbot can be overridden in my testing instance so that I can simply work on my local repository and commit those changes to Openshift. :)
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