A Plotly Dash-based dashboard.
After cloning/downloading the repository, simply install TransMonee-Dashboard as a package into your target virtual environment:
$ pip install PATH_TO_transmonee_dashboard
During development you will likely want to perform an editable install so that changes to the source code take immediate effect on the installed package.
$ pip install -e PATH_TO_transmonee_dashboard
This project comes with two convenience scripts for running your project in development and production environments, or you can use your own WSGI server to run the app.
Installing this package into your virtualenv will result into the development
executable being installed into your path when the virtualenv is activated. This
command invokes your Dash app's run_server method, which in turn uses the
Flask development server to run your app. The command is invoked as follows,
with proj_slug being replaced by the value provided for this cookiecutter
parameter.
$ run-project_slug-dev
The script takes a couple of arguments optional parameters, which you can
discover with the --help flag. You may need to set the port using the --port
parameter. If you need to expose your app outside your local machine, you will
want to set --host 0.0.0.0.
While convenient, the development webserver should not be used in
production. Installing this package will also result in a production executable
being installed in your virtualenv. This is a wrapper around the
mod_wsgi-express command, which streamlines use of the mod_wsgi Apache
module to run your your app. In addition to
installing the mod_wsgi Python package, you will need to have installed
Apache. See installation instructions in the mod_wsgi
documentation. This script also takes a
range of command line arguments, which can be discovered with the --help flag.
$ run-project_slug-prod
This script will also apply settings found in the module transmonee_dashboard.prod_settings (or a custom Python file supplied
with the --settings flag) and which takes precedence over the same settings
found in transmonee_dashboard.settings.
A notable advantage of using mod_wsgi over other WSGI servers is that we do
not need to configure and run a web server separate to the WSGI server. When
using other WSGI servers (such as Gunicorn or uWSGI), you do not want to expose
them directly to web requests from the outside world for two reasons: 1)
incoming requests will not be buffered, exposing you to potential denial of
service attacks, and 2) you will be serving your static assets via Dash's Flask
instance, which is slow. The production script uses mod_wsgi-express to spin
up an Apache process (separate to any process already running and listening on
port 80) that will buffer requests, passing them off to the worker processes
running your app, and will also set up the Apache instance to serve your static
assets much faster than would be the case through the Python worker processes.
Note: You will need to reinstall this package in order for changes to the
run-transmonee_dashboard-prod script to take effect even if you
installed its an editable install with (ie pip install -e).
You can easily run your app using a WSGI server of your choice (such as Gunicorn
for example) with the transmonee_dashboard.wsgi entry point
(defined in wsgi.py) like so:
$ gunicorn transmonee_dashboard.wsgi
Note: if you want to enable Dash's debug mode while running with a WSGI server,
you'll need to export the DASH_DEBUG environment variable to true. See the
Dev Tools section of the Dash Docs for more
details.