PoziConnect

PoziConnect provides you with a simple interface for accessing, processing, analysing and exporting your organisation's spatial and non-spatial data.

It can be executed from the Python source code, or it can be compiled into a Windows binary release.

Running on Windows

Install Python

Install Portable Python into a subdirectory of vendor. This is the only Python that PoziConnect will use - you don't need a system install of Python. We have a tested version saved here: Portable Python 2.7.3.2.

Choose the following modules during installation:

• PyWin32
• Py2Exe
• wxPython
• PyODBC

Make sure that PYTHON_DIR in setenv_python.bat correctly points to the Python App directory. For example:

SET PYTHON_DIR=%VENDOR%\Portable Python 2.7.3.2\App

Install GDAL binaries

Install GDAL binaries into a subdirectory of vendor.

You may need to match the architecture of the binaries (32 or 64-bit) with that of the operating system on which you will run PoziConnect. We have a tested (32-bit) version saved here: release-1600-gdal-1-9-mapserver-6-2.

The GDAL_BASE variable in PoziConnect.ini must point to the GDAL bin directory. For example:

GDAL_BASE: vendor\release-1600-gdal-1-9-mapserver-6-2\bin

Run it

Launch PoziConnect.bat to run PoziConnect from the source code.

Compiling on Windows

To compile PoziConnect into a Windows binary for public release, perform the steps in the previous section, then run build.bat.

A full release of PoziConnect will be output to the dist directory. It should contain PoziConnect.exe, additional DLLs, GDAL (from vendor\*gdal*), and runtime directories and configuration taken from the top level of this repository.

Customising Logo:

Logos are compiled when the application is built using build.bat. To update a logo, simply edit/replace the file at app\PoziConnect\gui\gui_logo.png

Program Icon

To create an icon file, upload a 48x48 png to http://convertico.com/ and download the ico file it generates to app\PoziConnect\gui.

After the build process, the PoziConnect.exe will not display the program icon on all systems. Follow instructions at https://command-tab.com/2008/07/21/how-to-combine-ico-files-into-a-windows-exe/ to manually add the icon to the exe.

Other notes:

• Additional logging can be activated by setting the log level in logger.py
• Sometimes, changes to the source code (*.py) are not correctly reflected in the corresponding compiled code (*.pyc). Delete the *.pyc files to force their regeneration.

Running on Mac/UNIX

It is good practice to use virtualenv to isolate Python dependencies (as described here), and pip to install those dependencies. However, in the case of PoziConnect this is complicated by two issues.

Special dependencies

Firstly, PoziConnect depends on two things that are better installed as operating system packages: GDAL and wxPython.

When GDAL is installed with its Python components, it provides Python langugage bindings, but also many extra command line tools. PoziConnect uses GDAL via the command line (not via Python bindings). Install it on Mac using homebrew:

brew update && brew install gdal --with-postgres --with-postgresql

After this, the output of ogrinfo --formats should include -> "PostgreSQL" (read/write).

The wxPython module integrates with operating system GUI components and is generally not installed via pip. Install it on Mac as described here, with:

brew update && brew install wxmac

The requirements.txt file records module versions known to work together.

The remaining, normal python module dependency is pyodbc. At this point you can create a virtualenv, then install the recommended pyodbc into it:

pip install `grep pyodbc requirements.txt`

The output of pip freeze should now be very similar to requirements.txt.

Virtualenv ain't framework

Secondly, as you will see if you attempt to run PoziConnect from within the virtualenv, wxPython needs to be run from a framework build of Python in order to access the screen. The Python in the virtualenv is not a proper framework Python (even when created from your system's famework Python). This issue is discussed in the wxPython documentation.

The solution is to run PoziConnect from your system Python, but give it access to the modules in the virtualenv. This access can be set up after Python is started, as described in the virtualenv documentation.

If the environment variable POZICONNECT_ACTIVATE_THIS is set to the full path of a bin/activate_this.py file in a virtualenv, PoziConnect will perform execfile on it to gain access to that virtualenv's modules.

You can set the POZICONNECT_ACTIVATE_THIS variable using a tool like autoenv.

Run it

With this done, run deactivate to leave your virtualenv and return to your system's Python, then launch PoziConnect using the PoziConnect.sh bash script.

Working with PoziConnectConfig

The Pozi Connect tasks that Pozi maintains for its clients are kept in a separate repository. To test Pozi Connect with the available tasks, set up a symlink so that Pozi Connect can read the tasks from the PoziConnectConfig repository.

mklink /D C:\Users\Simon\GitHub\PoziConnect\tasks C:\Users\Simon\GitHub\PoziConnectConfig

Any data files that Pozi Connect expects to find in the output folder can also be linked.

mklink /D C:\Users\Simon\GitHub\PoziConnect\output C:\Data\_PoziConnect

Other notes

• Running with setuptools 0.7.5 installed triggered the error AttributeError: ResourceManager instance has no attribute '_warn_unsafe_extraction'. Upgrading to setuptools 1.1 fixed the problem. Check your version of setuptools with which easy_install | xargs cat.

Modes of execution

PoziConnect can be executed in several modes:

• Interactive mode: is entered when PoziConnect is launched without command-line parameters. It is used for running tasks ad hoc.

• Silent mode: is entered when PoziConnect launched with the --recipe command-line paramater (see below). This is used to run multiple tasks unattended (i.e. nightly, scheduled processing).

Layout

• app: source code of the PoziConnect application
• vendor: place external dependencies here for Windows (Python, GDAL)
• tasks: contains the task INI files
• recipes: contains recipes (text files listing successive tasks)
• PoziConnect.ini: sets some environment variables
• PoziConnect.bat: a wrapper to run from source on Windows
• PoziConnect.sh: a wrapper to run from source on Mac/UNIX

Using recipes

Recipes are executed using the --recipe flag, for example:

PoziConnect.bat --recipe=recipes/example_01.txt

Where recipies/example_01.txt is a text file with a list of tasks to run (tasks are found in the tasks directory).

TODO

• Finish renaming PlaceLab to PoziConnect in the entire codebase.

Copyright

Pozi Pty Ltd © 2009-2019