Conduit Backend

Django, MySQL and AWS Backend for Conduit – an intuitive, productivity-enhancing, labour-reducing text editor built around Large Language Models and other AI tooling.

• See AWS/aws_readme.md for details on how to deploy a LLaMA 2 model onto AWS using Docker and Terraform.

Contents

• Heroku Deployment
• Get Started - Development
  • Set up MySQL Database
  • Django and Server
  • Testing

Heroku Deployment

We are using the Heroku Postgres add-on as our database.

If you remove this add-on for any reason, then re-add it later, you must do the following:

• In Heroku settings, update the Config Var DATABASE_URL to the URL given in the config var of the database you just added. This may be called something like HEROKU_POSTGRESQL_AMBER_URL, and will be of the format postgres://username:password@hostname:port/dbname.

• Similarly, update the DATABASE_URL GitHub repository secret for this repo.

• If using one, update your .env file accordingly. Run source .env to load this into your shell environment.

Get Started - Local Development

Set up MySQL Database

If you want to test offline, you can do so with MySQL by following the instructions below.

See here for the MySQL Getting Started docs, or follow the steps below.

• First, install MySQL and set up your root account – see here for download links and details.

• Inside this directory, run:

  pip install mysqlclient

• Check your MySQL installation works properly by logging in as root. In your terminal, run:

  mysql -u root -p

  and type in your root password, set in the step above.

• Now you're logged into MySQL, set up a new superuser account as follows:

  CREATE USER 'conduit'@'localhost'            -- This is the username.
    IDENTIFIED BY 'JnlezOynC411I4SZ'; -- This is the password.
  GRANT ALL
    ON *.*
    TO 'conduit'@'localhost'
    WITH GRANT OPTION;
  
  GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON test_conduitdb.* TO 'conduit'@'localhost'; -- Allows us to run Django tests later.
  
  exit; -- Log out of root.

  • The username and password are chosen here to match the Django settings.py configuration – see the "MySQL local database for testing" comment. We can and should change these later.

  • See here for more details on creating a superuser.

• Back in the terminal, run:

  mysql -u nw -p
  
  # nw is the username you set above.

  and enter the password above -

  JnlezOy`nC411"I}4S`Z
  

  - to log into your newly created superuser account.

  Now you're inside MySQL, run:

  CREATE DATABASE conduitdb;

  • This name is also specified in the settings.py DATABASE variable on line 79.

Well done! From this point on, we only need worry about Django and the code in this repo.

Django and Server Setup

• Set up and activate a Python virtual environment, and install the necessary packages.

  python venv path/to/your/venv
  source path/to/your/venv/bin/activate
  conda activate # if using conda
  pip install -r requirements.txt

• Uncomment the "MySQL local database for testing" code in settings.py. Migrate the models in models.py to our newly created conduitdb database:

  python manage.py makemigrations
  python manage.py migrate

  • You'll need to run these commands again if you change any of the models in models.py.

• Make an admin account for the app:

  python manage.py createsuperuser

  and enter a username, email and password.

• Run the development web server:

  python manage.py runserver

  and visit the address it gives you - probably something like http://127.0.0.1:8000/.

• Visit http://127.0.0.1:8000/admin (or the equivalent if your local server's IP address is different) and enter the admin account details that you just made for the app. You should be able to view the Django administration page for the site.

Great job! You're all ready to start development on the site.

Testing

All features of the site should have associated test functions in user_accounts/tests.py.

To run them, simply call:

python manage.py test