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Backend API

Running the API

Setup

# Create a python virtual environment
python3.12 -m venv venv
# Activate the environment
source venv/bin/activate
# Install dependencies
pip install -r requirements.txt

Create a .env file with following content

FRONTEND_URL="https://localhost:8080"
CAS_SERVER_URL="https://login.ugent.be"
DATABASE_URI="database connection string: postgresql://..., see discord..."
SECRET_KEY="<secret key to sign JWT tokens>" # e.g. generate with `openssl rand -hex 32`
ALGORITHM="HS256" # algorithm used to sign JWT tokens
FILE_PATH="files" # Location where uploaded files are stored

Install docker

To be able to run the automated tests or run a local development database, follow the installation instructions for either docker engine (CLI) or docker desktop (GUI, includes docker engine).

Usage

Activate the environment:

source venv/bin/activate

Run the web server:

./run.sh

This will start a local development server on port 5173

Recommended: run a local instance of the database in a docker container

# Pull the latest postgres image
docker pull postgres
# Run the postgres deamon in a docker container
docker run --name my_postgres_container \
  -p 5432:5432 \
  -e POSTGRES_USER=username \
  -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=password \
  -e POSTGRES_DB=dbname \
  -d \
  postgres

Change this line in .env to reflect database connection info

DATABASE_URI="postgresql://username:password@localhost:5432/dbname"

Run alembic to initialize the database

alembic upgrade head

You can find more info about alembic here.

Managing the database

# Stop the database container
docker stop my_postgres_container
# Start the database container again
docker start my_postgres_container

# Remove a stopped container
docker rm my_postgres_container

If you installed Docker Desktop, you can use the GUI to manage your containers and images.

The API

Login

Authentication happens with the use of CAS. The client can ask where it can find the CAS server with the /api/authority endpoint. A ticket then can be obtained via <authority>?service=<redirect_url>. The CAS server will redirect to <redirect_url>?ticket=<ticket> after authentication. Once the client is authenticated, further authorization happens with JWT. To obtain this token, a POST request has to be made to /api/token/, with the CAS ticket <ticket> and the <redirect_url>. The redirect url is needed to verify the ticket. If the ticket is valid, a webtoken will be returned. To authorize each request, add the token in the Authorization header.

Developing

To format the python code in place to conform to PEP 8 style:

autopep8 -ri .

Testing

You can add tests by creating test_* files and test_* functions under tests directory.

Run the tests (in the virtual environment):

pytest -v