obdemo 1.2

Demo website configuration for OpenBlock (hyperlocal news for Django)

obdemo

A Django application containing configuration and overrides for the openblock demo site.

obdemo is intented to serve as a useful example of how to set up a site based on the OpenBlock code, in particular ebpub.

This package is part of OpenBlock. For more information, see the documentation or the project website.

Problems can be reported to the issue tracker.

Discussion is on the ebcode google group or the #openblock channel on freenode.

Installation

Do not just try to easy_install or pip install obdemo. It has a lot of specific dependencies which can’t/shouldn’t be captured by setup.py.

Instead, see the full documentation at http://openblockproject.org/docs/install/index.html which includes links to pip requirements files and instructions on preparing your system.

OpenBlock

OpenBlock is a web application and RESTful service that allows users to browse and search their local area for “hyper-local news” - to see what’s going on recently in the immediate geographic area.

For installation instructions and other documentation, see http://openblockproject.org/docs/ (or the .rst files in the docs/ directory).

For help, you can try the ebcode group: http://groups.google.com/group/ebcode or look for us in the #openblock IRC channel on irc.freenode.net.

About the Project

OpenBlock began life as the open-source code released by Everyblock.com in June 2009. Originally created by Adrian Holovaty and the Everyblock team, it is now developed as an open-source (GPL) project by OpenPlans, at http://openblockproject.org.

Funding for the initial creation of Everyblock and the ongoing development of OpenBlock has been provided by the Knight Foundation (http://www.knightfoundation.org/).

OpenBlock 1.2.0 (Released 5/23/2012)

Upgrade Notes

• As usual, install all dependencies, eg if you are upgrading a source checkout:

  pip install -r ebpub/requirements.txt
  pip install -e ebpub
  pip install -r ebdata/requirements.txt
  pip install -e ebdata
  pip install -r obadmin/requirements.txt
  pip install -e obadmin
  pip install -r obdemo/requirements.txt
  pip install -e obdemo

• As usual, sync and migrate the database:

  django-admin.py syncdb
  django-admin.py migrate

• In this release, there are some changes to the Block model and the import script, which combine to give you better search results and geocoding if you reload your blocks data. To do so:

  • Run migrations, as described above

  • Shut down your scrapers

  • Back up your database

  • Re-import blocks with the –reset option (that’s important!), via either the admin UI or the command line … see http://openblockproject.org/docs/install/geodata.html#streets-blocks

  • Be sure to also regenerate the Streets, BlockIntersections, and Intersections as per the docs.

  • Browse your site… everything should work except that streets with previously cryptic names like “99” or “87” will now have a more recognizable full name, eg. “State Route 99” or “Interstate 87”.

  • Start your scrapers again.

  The website should remain operational during this process, though some pages may briefly give errors during the process, and URLs for highways will change to include the prefix.

Backward Incompatibilities

• Removed foreign keys EmailAlert.block and SavedPlace.block; instead they now have geometries which can be used to find a nearest block. This makes it safer to re-load your blocks data if you need to. Running migrations will take care of existing alerts and saved places, but you can’t safely downgrade if you change your mind; make database backups as always! (Ticket #257)

• Removed mystery fields Schema.grab_bag, Schema.grab_bag_headline, Schema.intro. (Ticket #232)

• Removed safe_id_sort_reversed template tag; use the for loop’s reverse option instead, eg. {% for item in itemlist|safe_id_sort reversed %}

• Moved the friendlydate template filter from ebpub.db.templatetags.eb into ebpub.db.templatetags.dateutils, where it seems to belong.

• Moved the recaptcha template tag from ebpub.neighbornews.templatetags into ebpub.db.templatetags.recaptcha_tags. Templates using it will now need to do {% load recaptcha_tags %}.

• Moved one obscure template tag, {% get_locations_for_item %}, from ebpub.widgets.templatetags into ebpub.db.templatetags.recaptcha_tags. Templates using it will now need to do {% load eb %}.

• Renamed a bunch of template tag functions to match the name of the tag, eg. “do_filter_url()” is now “filter_url()”. This makes the API docs easier to read; it doesn’t affect templates, only code that imports those functions directly - and there problably is none of that.

• Added a “View selected items on map” link and checkboxes on Schema filter pages, to allow viewing explicitly selected items on the “big map”.

• Changed URLs used by the schema_filter view, so some bookmarks may break. (Ticket # 266)

• Removed the EB_MEDIA_ROOT and EB_MEDIA_URL settings; now use django’s normal MEDIA_ROOT and MEDIA_URL instead.

• Removed the ImproperCity exception, which only served to prevent using blocks in places such as unincorporated parts of counties, where there is nothing that could be called a ‘city’.

• Removed unused NewsItem.block field, part of ticket #93.

• Removed ebdata/retrieval/scrapers/new_newsitem_list_detail.py, which wasn’t used anywhere.

• Removed ebpub/streets/blockimport/tiger/import_blocks2010.py. Census 2010 files are now supported by the main import_blocks.py script.

• Removed item.intersecting from Widgets context; it was never documented properly. Instead use the new get_locations_for_item template tag.

• Removed the old map javascript since we’re now using openblockrichmap.js everywhere.

New Features in 1.2

• You can now safely re-import blocks data. In fact, this is highly recommended, you’ll get better geocoding results due to fixes for #264 and #278. Use the “–reset” option to “import_blocks_tiger”.

• Added ebpub.utils.geodjango:interpolate() function which finds the point on a linestring that’s the given distance (or fraction) from the first point. (Adds dependency on Shapely, since otherwise this would require a database call.)

• Added ‘prefix’ to the Streets models, used for things like “State Hwy” in the US census TIGER data; without it, we were getting geocoding failures, confusing/ambigous street names in the UI, etc. Closes #264.

• Location import in admin UI now runs in background.

• Admin UI now provides links to view various things (NewsItems, Locations, Blocks, Streets, LocationTypes) on the live site.

• NewsItem now allows saving with an empty description.; some things might really only have a title available.

• Support multiple types of Yahoo maps, due to olwidget upgrade.

• ebpub.geocoder.base.full_geocode() now has a convert_to_block argument, factored out from ebdata.retrieval. If True, this tries to disambiguate bad blocks on good streets by rounding down to the nearest block, eg. converting ‘299 Wabash St’ to ‘200 block of Wabash St.’ May help geocoding when eg. census data doesn’t quite match reality.

• Schemas now have an edit_window field, representing how long (in hours) users are allowed to edit their content after it’s created. Used by the neighbornews forms.

• Rest API: Allow searching by multiple types (schemas).

• Added an admin UI for importing NewsItems from spreadsheets (currently only handles CSV and old-style Excel sheets; not .xslx) (Ticket #126)

• Added a generic spreadsheet scraper in ebdata/scrapers/general/spreadsheet/retrieval.py, (currently only handles CSV and old-style Excel sheets; not .xslx) (Ticket #274)

• ebdata.scrapers.general.georss address-extraction fallback now looks in all tags that look like text.

• Search form now searches Places too.

• Neighbornews schemas now have chartable categories.

• Allow overriding the template for schema_filter view on a per-schema basis, by creating a template named db/schema_filter/<schema>.html

• Nieghbornews schemas now have specific templates for the schema_filter view.

• Added featured flag on ebpub.db.Lookup model, allowing admins to designate some Lookup values as “special”, for use in eg. navigation. (#268)

• Added a get_featured_lookups_by_schema template tag, puts into context a list of the “special” Lookup values for that schema. (#268)

• Added Lookup.objects.get_featured_lookup_for_item(newsitem, attribute_key) method to find out which “featured” Lookups a newsitem has for a given attribute.

• Added a lookup_values_for_attribute template tag, dumps all values of a given db.attribute field as a JSON list.

• Made schema_filter the default view of Schemas, ticket #272

• Added ebpub.moderation app that allows users to flag NewsItems as spam or inappropriate, and an admin UI for it; see moderation for more.

• Added Schema.allow_flagging boolean to toggle moderation flagging per schema. Allowed by default on the ebpub.neighbornews schemas.

• User-uploaded images now supported for NewsItems, and enabled for the ebpub.neighbornews user-contributed content schemas.

• Added new userlinks.html template so you can override the links at top right of the page.

• Added a get_locations_for_item template tag, see ../main/widgets for more.

• Now works with Postgresql 9.1, ticket #262

• Nicer map controls thanks to Frank Hebbert, ticket #225

• Added advanced hook for filtering schemas based on arbitrary request data; implement this by assigning settings.SCHEMA_MANAGER_HOOK = 'some_module:some_function', where some_module.some_function takes arguments (request, manager) and returns a models.Manager instance whose query sets will return the allowed Schemas.

• Add Vary headers to REST API responses, for more correct HTTP cache-ability.

• Auto-complete categories on the “neighbornews” add/edit forms.

• Optional ReCaptcha on the user-contributed (“Neighbornews”) add/edit forms.

• User-contributed content (“neighbornews”) now has edit and delete forms.

• Sensible defaults on most DateFields and DateTimeFields, can still be overridden.

• Logout now redirects you to whatever page you were viewing.

• Add a “properties” JSON field to the Profile model, for more flexible per-user metadata.

• User admin UI now shows Profiles and API keys inline.

• “Sticky widgets” aka “pinned” NewsItems in widgets: You can use the admin UI to make certain NewsItems stay visible in the widget permanently or until an expiration date that you set.

• settings.NEIGHBORNEWS_USE_CAPTCHA can now be a string path to a function.

• New NewsItem.objects.by_request() method for filtering based on eg. user privileges.

• New get_schema_manager(request) method for filtering based on current request, with an extensibility hook too.

• At least put the darn geocoder cache results in the admin so you can delete them manually if desired. Refs #163

• Admin UI option to save a copy of a schema as a new schema.

Bugs fixed

• Admin users no longer have a limit on file upload size.

• Handle importing locations in other projections than 4326. Thanks Karen Tracey. Refs #214.

• We now use the primary street name for blocks loaded from US census TIGER data, instead of whichever one we see last, which may be an alternate name. Issue #278

• Location import (both command-line and admin UI) no longer blows up when re-importing the same Locations.

• RSS feed URLs fixed to use settings.EB_DOMAIN rather than the sites framework for getting the root URL. For consistency with the rest of OpenBlock.

• Street names properly normalized on input (ticket #166)

• parsing.normalize() and text.slugify() no longer blow up if fed non-string input.

• Schemas with allow_charting=False were shown on the schema_filter view, but not on its map. Fixed schema_filter_geojson so now they show up on map too.

• Fix filtering by location and date on big map page.

• Fix #281, wrong schemas shown on big map page.

• Map icon URLs for db.Location and streets.PlaceType can now be relative to STATIC_URL

• Fix #282, missing items on place detail pages

• Fix KeyError when an Attribute references a non-existent Lookup.

• Fix error on FilterChain.add(key, lookup) when key isn’t a SchemaField.

• Should be possible to run OpenBlock at a URL prefix now; removed all hardcoded URLs. Ticket #90.

• Fix missing AJAX timeouts on “save place” button, thanks Tim Shedor. Ticket #269

• Fix error in NewsItem.objects.by_attribute() with many-to-many lookups: looking for [3,47] was finding any number starting with 3 or ending with 47.

• Make manage.sh script executable.

• Fix rare error when we have a Block instance but its block range doesn’t match the block range regex. Known example: 1600-7-1600-9 Hanover Blvd. in Columbia, MO.

• Allow choosing multiple values when filtering via Lookups. Ticket # 267.

• Use query params instead of weird URIs for schema_filter view, ticket # 266.

• Remove bogus breadcrumbs from schema_filter page; ticket #270

• Filtering NewsItems by Block no longer causes 500 error.

• block_import_tiger can now be safely re-run on the same file, it won’t create duplicate blocks anymore.

• Fixed double-logging of scrapers to the console.

• /streets/ list doesn’t blow up if you haven’t set DEFAULT_LOCTYPE_SLUG.

• Workaround for getting profile when request.user is a LazyUser instance.

• De-hardcoded more URLs.

• When using a too-old python version, our setup.py scripts now give a more informative error, instead of SyntaxError due to a with statement.

• Custom login view now works when going to admin site, and is compatible with (uses same cookies as) django.contrib.auth. Ticket #174

• Logout form was broken by bad template name. Fixed.

• Fix 500 error when user doesn’t exist.

• Don’t barf constructing richmaps url if there are no matching newsitems

• Group blocks by street on “choose a block” page, ticket # 263

• Store suffixes on streets with names like ‘Wilson Park’; fixes some geocoding failures.

• Fix 500 error on newsitem.geojson, ticket #38

Documentation

Too many to mention, but here are some:

• Python API documentation for all(?) of ebpub, ebdata, obadmin, obdemo packages. Ticket #159.

• Better docs on how to import spreadsheets via scraper or admin.

• Clarify behavior of email alerts.

• Better docs on what the “core” NewsItem fields are.

• Document ebpub.db.bin scripts. Ticket #96.

• Documentation about comments and flagging of NewsItems. Ticket #252

• Better docs about template overrides, see custom-look-feel.

• Document ebpub.streets.Places, see places. Ticket #253

• Basic docs for ebpub.neighbornews, see user_content. Ticket #211

• Document how to get the 2010 census files instead of 2009.

• Added docs on all the settings in settings_default.py.

• Better documentation about Schemas, SchemaFields, Attributes, and how they relate.

• Fixes to example crontab, thanks Tim Shedor

Other

• Factored out the georss scraper’s point-parsing code into a get_point() function in ebdata.retrieval.utils.

• Generic rss scraper is now the basis for obdemo.scrapers.add_news which did the same thing.

• Generic rss scraper is now a ListDetailScraper and RssListDetailScraper subclass. Ticket #242

• Upgrade jquery-ui to 1.8.17.

• Upgrade jquery to 1.7.1.

• Moved some NewsItemListDetailScraper functionality up into BaseScraper, so it’s more widely usable.

• Deprecate log_exception(), the logging module actually does that already

• Move full_geocode() to ebpub.geocoder.base; it was in an obscure place

• By default, one API key per user. 3 was kind of silly.