IDS721 Group-Final-Project Chinese Population Predictor

In this project, we used regression model and imported dataset from kaggle to train it. We used Flask to build a light-weight web framework to predict the future population in China. And then we deploy our service in GCP and used locust to load test it.

The introduction video of our project: https://youtu.be/zTXA0Jn-ezI

Architecture

How to Run the App

Clone the repo

git@github.com:xzhnshng/IDS721-group-project.git

Create & enter python virtual environment

# first cd to the project directory
# create virtual environment
python -m venv env

# enter the virtual environment
source env/bin/activate

Setup - Install the required packages

make all

Train the model

python model.py

Run the application

python main.py

The dataset is from https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/anandhuh/population-data-china

Containerization

# create image
docker build -t population-predictor:latest .

# create and run container
docker run --rm -p 5000:5000 --name population-predictor-app population-predictor:latest

Now you can access service on http://127.0.0.1:5000/

Set up on GCP

Create a new project and check if the project correct and set working project if not. In this step you need to record the , which will be used in next steps:
```
gcloud projects describe $GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT
```
```
gcloud config set project $GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT 
```
Paste command below on the GCP shell:

git clone git@github.com:xzhnshng/IDS721-group-project.git

In the project folder, build the containerized flask application image:
```
gcloud builds submit --tag gcr.io/<PROJECT-ID>/app 
```
Last step, deploy the image on the cloud run service:

gcloud run deploy --image gcr.io/<PROJECT-ID>/app --platform managed

And you will need to name your service and select region you want to deploy.

Lastly, you can see the service running on the given URL:

Load Testing

I used https://locust.io/ to start load testing for the flask project.

Download locust
```
pip3 install locust
```

Write locustfile.py:

import time
from locust import HttpUser, task, between

class QuickstartUser(HttpUser):

    @task
    def submitForm(self):
        self.client.post("/predict", {"Year":"2024"})

Run "locust". Once you’ve started Locust, open up a browser and point it to http://localhost:8089. You will be greeted with something like this:

Here is our test result.