This is the server backend code that is used for communicating with the Arctic Bio Map (ABM) mobile client.

It is also used by the ABM Front-End Portal for visualizing the sightings information for researchers.

This server is written in Python 2.7.

Checkout a copy of the repository from BitBucket. Install Python 2.7 on your system if it is not already; Linux and Mac OS X may already have a copy installed.

Then install tornado and sqlalchemy.

$ pip install tornado
$ pip install sqlalchemy
$ pip install mysql-python

Create a new database in MySQL:

$ mysql -uroot
mysql> create database abm;
mysql> ^D

Start up a local server with:

$ cd backend
$ python server.py DATABASE_URL="" COOKIE=""

DATABASE_URL must be a database connection URL like mysql://USER:PASS@HOST/DB. COOKIE must be a random hex string. If COOKIE changes, then all users signed into the server through their browser will be logged out.

Tests are available in the backend/tests directory. They are Shell scripts so will only work on Mac/Unix systems. Be sure to install jq for your OS.

This is a configuration file for Upstart on Ubuntu. Edit the file to point to the location of your production installation and then install the file in /etc/init. Then you can control the server with initctl:

$ sudo initctl status abm-server
$ sudo initctl start abm-server
$ sudo initctl stop abm-server
$ sudo initctl restart abm-server

The script will also automatically start the server when the host starts up.

This project is MIT Licensed.