GCP Configuration¶

Full documentation on configuring Django applications for App Engine is available in the official App Engine docs. Notes are provided here for those configuring an environment from scratch. These steps only need to be performed once. If you are developing against the official Pitt-Google Broker GCP project then these these steps should have already been taken.

Static File Storage¶

You will need to configure a GCP Storage Bucket for publicly hosting static files (images, CSS, etc.). This can be from the console webpage or from the command line as shown below. :

Create a bucket for hosting static files. Default values for the storage class and bucket location should be sufficient, but can be specified if desired.

gsutil mb -p [PROJECT_NAME] -c [STORAGE_CLASS] -l [BUCKET_LOCATION] -b on gs://[BUCKET_NAME]/

Make sure the bucket is publicly readable.

gsutil defacl set public-read gs://broker-web-static

Cloud SQL¶

The website will pull data from the broker pipeline to populate page content as necessary. However, a dedicated Cloud SQL database is also used to store website and user data. You can use the console SQL interface to create this database, or accomplish it from the command line:

Start by making sure the Cloud SQL Admin API is enables.

gcloud services enable sqladmin

Create a Cloud SQL instance.

gcloud sql instances create [INSTANCE_NAME] --tier=[MACHINE_TYPE] --region=[REGION]

Create a database on the Cloud SQL instance.

gcloud sql databases create [DATABASE_NAME] --instance=[INSTANCE_NAME]

Create a new user account that your application will user to access the database.

gcloud sql users create [USER_NAME] --instance=[INSTANCE_NAME] --password=[PASSWORD]

The Django Application¶

Once Cloud SQL is configured, you will need to create the necessary database tables. The management script packaged with the website’s source code automates this process. You will need to connect to the Cloud SQL database and migrate database models from the Django application into the database.

Use the Cloud SDK to fetch the connection name of your instance. The connection name will be listed in the format [PROJECT_NAME]:[REGION_NAME]:[INSTANCE_NAME].

gcloud sql instances describe [INSTANCE_NAME]

Make sure the database settings in the Django application (broker_web/main/settings.py) point to the new database you just created. In general, the settings should look like the following:

# broker_web/settings.py

if os.getenv('GAE_APPLICATION', None):
    # Running on production App Engine, so connect to Google Cloud SQL using
    # the unix socket at /cloudsql/<your-cloudsql-connection string>
    DATABASES = {
        'default': {
            'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.mysql',  # Assuming you are using MySQL
            'HOST': '/cloudsql/[CONNECTION_NAME]',
            'NAME': '[DATABASE_NAME]',
            # You'll probably want to set the auth data in your environment
            'USER': '[DATABASE_USER]',
            'PASSWORD': '[DATABASE_PASSWORD]',
        }
    }

else:
    # Running locally so connect to Cloud SQL via the proxy.
    # To start the proxy see https://cloud.google.com/sql/docs/mysql-connect-proxy
    DATABASES = {
        'default': {
            'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.mysql',
            'HOST': '127.0.0.1',
            'PORT': '3306',
            'NAME': '[DATABASE_NAME]',
            # Here is an example using django-environ
            'USER': env.str('DB_USER'),
            'PASSWORD': env.str('DB_PASSWORD'),
        }
    }
```

Launch a SQL proxy so a a Django application running from your local machine can connect to the GCP SQL database. Instructions on downloading the cloud_sql_proxy application are available here.

./cloud_sql_proxy -instances "[REGION_NAME]"=tcp:3306

Make the necessary database migrations and set up an admin account.

python manage.py migrate --run-syncdb
python manage.py createsuperuser

As a final step you will need to configure the Recaptcha service which is used to protect against bots. Make sure to add the appropriate public recaptcha key to broker_web/templates/recaptcha.html