The list of top-level dependencies is moved to requirements-app.txt,
which is used by `make freeze-requirements` to generate the full
list of requirements in requirements.txt.
(See alphagov/notifications-api#1938 for details.)
flask-script has been deprecated by the internal flask.cli module, but
making this carries a few changes with it
* you should add FLASK_APP=application.py and FLASK_DEBUG=1 to your
environment.sh.
* instead of using `python app.py runserver`, now you must run
`flask run -p 6012`. The -p command is important - the port must be
set before the config is loaded, so that it can live reload nicely.
(https://github.com/pallets/flask/issues/2113#issuecomment-268014481)
* find available commands by just running `flask`.
* run them using flask. eg `flask list_routes`
* define new tasks by giving them the decorator
`@app.cli.command('task-name')`. Task name isn't needed if it's just
the same as the function name. Alternatively, if app isn't available
in the current scope, you can invoke the decorator directly, as seen
in app/commands.py
The PDF preview is all good, but it’s hard, finickeity and feels dirty
to embed a PDF in a web page. It’s a more natural thing to embed an
image in a web page.
So this commit adds another endpoint to return an image of a letter
template. It generates this image from the PDF preview, so the stack
looks like:
1. `template.png` (generated in admin)
2. `template.pdf` (generated in admin)
3. HTML preview (generated by a `Renderer` in utils)
4. `Template` instance
5. serialised template from API
6. Template stored in database
The library used to convert the PDF to an image is Wand[1], which binds
to ImageMagick underneath. So in order to get this working locally on a
Mac you will probably need to do:
`brew install imagemagick ghostscript cairo pango`.
To get it working on Ubuntu/EC2 is an exercise left to the reader…
1. http://docs.wand-py.org/en/0.4.4/
This file needs to exist before the app can run, so create it automatically
rather than including it as an extra setup step in the README. The API app
already does this.
Experienced an error to do with the way npm handles its dependency
paths.
[Basic idea is here](https://docs.npmjs.com/how-npm-works/npm3#npm-v3-dependency-resolution).
My npm v2.x.x was failing because it couldn't find my Hogan library.
Upgrading npm, nuking `node_modules` and reinstalling/rebuilding
finally fixed everything.
Now you don’t need to remember what the two commands are and when you need to
run them, you can just run the bootstrap script instead.
Makes sense to have them here since the `pip install` is also in here.
Gulp was failing silently on Travis. I tracked this down to the task that
builds a custom, slimmed-down version of jQuery from source.
To fix this I’ve removed the task and replaced it with just `src`ing the
minified version of jQuery from `node_modules`.
Cons:
- A few more kb of JS
Pros:
- Less random, afternoon-chewing complexity
…or how to move a bunch of things from a bunch of different places into
`app/static`.
There are three main reasons not to use Flask Assets:
- It had some strange behaviour like only
- It was based on Ruby SASS, which is slower to get new features than libsass,
and meant depending on Ruby, and having the SASS Gem globally installed—so
you’re already out of being a ‘pure’ Python app
- Martyn and I have experience of doing it this way on Marketplace, and we’ve
ironed out the initial rough patches
The specific technologies this introduces, all of which are Node-based:
- Gulp – like a Makefile written in Javascript
- NPM – package management, used for managing Gulp and its related dependencies
- Bower – also package management, and the only way I can think to have
GOV.UK template as a proper dependency
…speaking of which, GOV.UK template is now a dependency. This means it can’t be
modified at all (eg to add a global `#content` wrapper), so every page now
inherits from a template that has this wrapper. But it also means that we have a
clean upgrade path when the template is modified.
Everything else (toolkit, elements) I’ve kept as submodules but moved them to a
more logical place (`app/assets` not `app/assets/stylesheets`, because they
contain more than just SASS/CSS).
