VC3 Website in Python/Flask Framework

Virtual Clusters for Community Computing project web application.

Overview

This repository contains the portal application for the VC3 project.

The VC3 Website runs on a CherryPy WSGI server, which handles incoming http connections and relay connections to python code. The python code uses a Flask framework in order to handle incoming requests and generate appropriate pages, which are rendered as .html templates.

Deployment Infrastructure

In order to setup this website within the VM, clone the vc3-deployment-infrastructure scripts from here and follow the readme. The respective scripts will clone and pull the latest vc3-website-python git repository, set up a virtual environment with the necessary dependencies for deployment, and start the server, such that it will continue running in the background until it has been manually killed.

Blog Flat-Pages Integration

The third script update_pages_directory.sh from the vc3-deployment-infrastructure will allow the Blog pages to automatically update and pull from a separate repository here. Markdown pages may be created following a YAML mapping of metadata, and generated to be automatically displayed on the VC3 website.

Creating New Routes

All website routes are located in portal/views.py and typically render .html templates pages. In order to create a new route, follow the basic notation:

def new-route():
    """Send the user to new-route page"""
    return render_template('new-route.html')

In order for the route to render the .html template, you must create a new .html page within the portal/templates directory.

Below is a suggested starting template for new .html pages for development of the website landing view (what users see when they are not logged in):

{%block title%}New Route Name{%endblock%}

{%block body%}

<!--==========================
  New Route Section
============================-->

<section id="new-route">

  <div class="container wow fadeInUp">

    <div class="row">

      Enter code and content here

    </div>

  </div>

</section>

{endblock}

Below is a suggested starting template for new .html pages for development of the website's logged in view (what users see when they ARE logged in):

{%block title%}New Route/Page Name{%endblock%}

{%block body%}

<!--==========================
  New Route Section
============================-->

<div class="content container">

  <div class="container-fluid">

    <div class="row">

      Enter code and content here

    </div>

  </div>

</div>

{endblock}