Apollo Portal

Apollo portal built on the Django web framework.

Updating the webserver

Updates should be applied through GitHub Workflows on pushes to branches dev and master.

An admin can manually update the webserver like so:

# Assumes you have SSH'd into the webserver
cd $APOLLO_PORTAL_ROOT
deploy/update.sh

Local development setup

Set up and activate a new virtual environment, with python>=3.10, then do this:

cd $YOUR_CHOSEN_DIRECTORY
git clone $GIT_REPO_URL apollo_portal
cd apollo_portal
python -m pip install -r requirements
# Jump into the Django project root
cd app
# Set up the database
python manage.py migrate
# Populate the DB with fake data
python manage.py seed
# Build the search index
python manage.py build_index
# Run a development server and check out the application
python manage.py runserver

The search backend

The site search functionality uses the Python Whoosh library. A search index must be built with every update that changes HTML templates:

python manage.py build_index

This command runs a development server, and makes a requests against it for every URL in settings.SITE_SEARCH_URLS. If a developer updates any URL paths in the application, they should ensure this list is also updated. i.e. if you add an endpoint which should be indexed, then add the URL to this list. This list could be replaced with a sitemap.xml file in future.