WatchTower: Admin interface for REST server with mongoDB

This is a "long description" file for the app that you are creating. If you submit your package to PyPi, this text will be presented on the public page of your package. Edit it to fit your needs.

Note: This README has to be written using reStructured Text, otherwise PyPi won't format it properly.

Installation

The package can be installed by running:

$ python setup.py install

For development purposes it is often more convenient to use:

$ python setup.py develop

or, sometimes even:

$ python setup.py develop --user

If have just created this package from the template or checked it out from version control (rather than used a pre-built source distribution), you might also need to update the Javascript dependencies using Bower:

$ bower install

In addition, you might need to create the Javascript/CSS asset bundle by running:

$ watchtower-manage assets build

The package can be published on PyPI:

$ python setup.py sdist register upload

After that, the package will be installable via easy_install or pip:

$ easy_install watchtower

Usage

The package contains a Flask-based web application. Before you can use it, you will need to perform some preparatory steps.

1. Copy sample_settings.py to settings.py and edit appropriately. Pay attention to debug options and database connection.

2. Set the environment variable CONFIG to point to this file:

   $ export CONFIG=/path/to/settings.py
   

3. Create the initial database:

   $ watchtower-manage createdb
   

4. Decide how you would like to run the application. There are multiple options. One is to use the built-in debug server:

   $ watchtower-manage runserver
   

   Another is to serve it using a WSGI container, such as Paste or Gunicorn. We suggest using PasteDeploy for that:

   $ paste serve sample_pasteconfig.ini
   

See sample_pasteconfig.init for more details.

Development

In order to understand the package organization it probably makes most sense to start by examining the watchtower.app module. All other extension modules and blueprints are enabled in the create_app function there.

The tests should be written in tests/. Those can be run using py.test.

The Javascript and CSS scripts are bundled using Flask-Assets. Each time you change javascript or CSS, you have to rebuild those bundles using:

$ watchtower-manage assets build

Alternatively, you can run a background process that will rebuild everything automatically:

$ watchtower-manage assets watch