The purpose of this project is to demonstrate how data from a webpage may be sent from the browser to a web server using a POST request. The data will then be stored in a MySQL database, where it can then be retrieved through a GET request or specially crafted URIs. Flask will be our webserver for this demonstration.

The following ports will be opened:

• 5000 python Flask server
• 3306 mysql server

The following webpages will be available at localhost:5000

• /
• /logs
• /log/id/logname

An explanation of each is provided in the USAGE section.

NOTE: THIS IS A PROTOTYPE. IT MUST BE HARDENED BEFORE DEPLOYMENT.

Python 3 is required for this particular setup. A mysql server must be setup and run on 3306 of localhost. (Modify server.py to change the port).

In order to not corrupt the local python environment, we're going to be using a virtual environment. virtualenv should be installed. (pip should also be installed if you are using a modern distribution of python3). If it is not installed:

shell> pip-3.x install virtualenv

where x is the python subversion.

You should then be able to create and use the python virtual environment. To do so you must first setup the venv folder, which will store our virtual environment libraries:

shell> virtualenv venv #venv is folder where the python virtual environment library is stored

If you are having problems, you can manually specify the python executable:

shell> virtualenv --python=/opt/local/bin/python3 venv #For example

To switch into the virtual environment:

shell> source venv/bin/activate

This will use the python interpreter created by virtualenv along with the libraries we are about to install.

Once activated you'll see a (venv) above your prompt to indicate you are using the virtual environment described by the contents of venv.

Later, to quit the virtual environment, type:

deactivate

Now that the virtual environment is installed, we can begin loading the libraries we'll need. They are listed in requirements.txt. To install them:

pip install -r requirements.txt

The virtual environment is now ready.

Follow the instructions on dev.mysql.com:

https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/osx-installation.html

Use the 'download' section of the mysql website to download the actual DMG image. Be sure to keep the temporary password it assigns you. We'll change it shortly.

On my machine, all mysql binaries are stored at:

/usr/local/mysql/bin

These programs must be run as root because of how they were installed. There are directions on the Oracle MySQL site to change this behavior.

Once installed, start the mysql server on port 3306:

shell> sudo /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqld_safe --bind-address=127.0.0.1

Now you have to change the temporary password provided by the installer.

To change the password:

shell> sudo /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql -u root -p'TempPassword'

where TempPassword is what was provided by the installer.

Then, in the mysql interface (Please use the password below):

mysql> SET PASSWORD = PASSWORD('ATestingPassword');

mysql> quit

Now we can load the sample database and tables provided:

shell> sudo /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql -u root -p'ATestingPassword' -r mysql.dump

This will setup the database to work with our prototype.

Note: There is a MySQL GUI for the Mac. I recommend Sequel Pro.

https://www.sequelpro.com/

When you open the sql database in Sequel Pro, make sure to select the "Socket" type of login; set the name to localhost; and use "root" as your username and "ATestingPassword" as the password.

For our example, you can use the gui to navigate to the 'PostTest' database; our requests will be stored in the ReceivedData table.

In a terminal window, make sure that the MySQL daemon is running:

shell> sudo /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_safe --bind-address=127.0.0.1

(The bind-address part is to restrict access to the localhost.)

In another terminal window, start the python virtual environment created above:

shell> source venv/bin/activate

As a reminder deactivate will exit the virtual environment.

Then start the web server:

shell> python server.py

From here, you can access the data-generation page at the URI:

http://localhost:5000/

Clicking the button will send a JSON object to the server, which will store it using the python mysql-connector in the database we created above. A response will be sent back to the webpage.

You can use Sequel Pro (above) to see the information stored in the database. Log in via a "Socket" connection to localhost with the root username and password. The data is located in the database "PostTest".

To see all logs currently in the server as a table view, navigate to:

http://localhost:5000/logs

From there you can select any of the icons after the comment section to pull up individual logs in a separate page. (Note the logs are formatted to be displayed in the browser, so the text actually contains <br/> in it. This can be changed at a later time. The URI for accessing the individual logs has this scheme /log/ID/NAME where ID is the id of the log report and NAME is the name of the log request from {log, events, messages, error}. For example, to get the full error log for the second bug report, the URI would be:

http://localhost:5000/log/2/log

Do note that any non-valid ID will return a 404 error.

To quit the web server, type CTRL+C a few times in its terminal window to halt it.

To shutdown the MySQL server use:

shell> sudo /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqladmin -u root -p'ATestingPassword' shutdown