SADC Medicines Database: a web application for sharing pharmaceutical procurement information between countries in the SADC region.

The SADC Medicines Database brings together data relating to the procurement of medicines from the national budgets of participating countries. This data is then presented in way that makes it possible to strike comparisons between the prices paid by the different parties.

This project, including all of its features and content is made available through Southern African Regional Programme on Access to Medicines and Diagnostics ("SARPAM").

The web application can be accessed at http://med-db.medicines.sadc.int/

The database is managed and kept up-to-date through an Admin interface at http://med-db-api.medicines.sadc.int/admin

This project is open-source, and anyone is welcome to contribute. If you just want to make us aware of a bug / make a feature request, then please add a new GitHub Issue (if a similar one does not already exist).

If you want to contribute to the code, please fork the repository, make your changes, and create a pull request.

• Clone the repository:

    git clone git@github.com:Code4SA/med-db.git
  

• Create and activate a virtualenv:

    cd med-db
    virtualenv env
    source env/bin/activate
  

• Install requirements:

    pip install -r 'requirements.txt'
  

• Update you hosts file by adding the following entries:

    127.0.0.1 med-db.medicines.localhost
    127.0.0.1 med-db-api.medicines.localhost
  

• Initialise an empty database

  • Install PostgreSQL, and run server application. On a Mac:

      brew install postgres
      postgres -D /usr/local/var/postgres
    

  • Create a new user named med_db, with password med_db and a database named med_db

      createuser med_db --pwprompt
      createdb -O med_db med_db
    

  • now comment the following lines in backend/__init__.py

      import admin
      import views
    

  • and create an empty database

      python
      >>> from backend import models, db
      >>> db.create_all()
    

    and then remember to uncomment those lines from the previous step.

• Run backend server

    python runserver_backend.py
  

This gives you an api for accessing the data at med-db-api.medicines.localhost, and an admin interface at med-db-api.medicines.localhost/admin

• Now, open a new terminal, and run the frontend server:

    cd med-db
    source env/bin/activate
    python runserver_frontend.py
  

  This gives you a frontend, at med-db.medicines.localhost

• To speed up certain view endpoints, you can run a redis instance that will cache the results from computationally expensive functions. See http://redis.io/topics/quickstart.

To deploy changes to the app, use fabric. For changes to the configuration, simply

fab production configure

and for changes to the app,

fab production deploy

If you need the server to install new dependencies, add the to requirements.txt and

fab production setup

To setup Postgres on a new Ubuntu server:

# install postgres
sudo apt-get install postgresql postgresql-contrib
# add a 'postgres' superuser
sudo passwd postgres
# as the superuser, create a new user and database for this project
su - postgres
createuser med_db --pwprompt
createdb -O med_db med_db

Add cronjob for daily db backup::

su - postgres
crontab -e
0 0 * * * pg_dump med_db --no-privileges > /tmp/med_db.sql

To restore the database from a backup::

su - postgres
psql med_db < /tmp/med_db.sql

Updating the Babel translation files::

# compile translations, after updating the translation files
pybabel compile -d frontend/translations

# recompile the master translation template, e.g. after changes to the english copy
cd frontend
pybabel extract -F babel.cfg -o messages.pot .

# update translation templates from the master file (keeping existing compiled translations in mind)
cd ..
pybabel update -i frontend/messages.pot -d frontend/translations