Setting up askme with PostgreSQL

1. Installing PosgreSQL and all required dependencies

   • sudo apt-get install postgresql postgresql-contrib
   • sudo apt-get install libpq-dev python3.8-dev
   • pip install -r requirements.txt

   NOTE: psycopg2 is the adapter we're using to connect to Postgres and it's dependent on libpq-dev and python3.8-dev. It's located in requirements.txt so installing of all packages must happen last !

2. Start the server if not started automatically

   • sudo /etc/init.d/postgresql start

3. Configure database and user

   3.1 Enter Postgres terminal

   • sudo -u postgres psql

   3.2 Create database and user - other name and password could be provided BUT make sure to also set them as env variables USER maps to ASKME_DB_ADMIN env variable; PASSWORD maps to ASKME_DB_ADMIN_PASS env variable

   • CREATE DATABASE askmedb;
   • CREATE USER {name} WITH ENCRYPTED PASSWORD {password}';

   3.3 Modify connection parameters (as recommended by official Django docs)

   • ALTER ROLE {name} SET client_encoding TO 'utf8';
   • ALTER ROLE {name} SET default_transaction_isolation TO 'read committed';
   • ALTER ROLE {name} SET timezone TO 'UTC';

   3.4 Give user privileges

   • GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE askmedb TO {name};
   • ALTER USER {name} CREATEDB;

4. Export env variables For security reasons and good practices, the name and password of the created PostgreSQL user that is administrating the project's database is not hardcoded in the setttings.py file, but we get them form the envirionemt variables

   • export ASKME_DB_ADMIN={same name used in step 3.2}
   • export ASKME_DB_ADMIN_PASS={same password used in step 3.2}

5. Run all migrations (env must be activated by this point)

   • python manage.py migrate

6. Create a super user to be able to login and acces the admin panel

   • python manage.py createsuperuser

7. Run the debug server

   • python manage.py runserver