mataroa

Naked blogging platform.

Community

We have a mailing list at ~sirodoht/[email protected] for the mataroa community to introduce themselves, their blogs, and discuss anything that’s on their mind!

Archives at lists.sr.ht/~sirodoht/mataroa-community

Tools

Victor Freire has created mata, a CLI tool for Mataroa.

Contributing

Feel free to open a PR on GitHub or send an email patch to ~sirodoht/[email protected].

On how to contribute using email patches see git-send-email.io.

Also checkout our docs on:

• Git Commit Message Guidelines
• File Structure Walkthrough
• Dependencies
• Server Playbook
• Admin and Moderation

Development

This is a Django codebase. Check out the Django docs for general technical documentation.

Structure

The Django project is mataroa. There is one Django app, main, with all business logic. Application CLI commands are generally divided into two categories, those under python manage.py and those under make.

Dependencies with Nix

This project is configured with Nix and direnv. The default profile is described in default.nix and the example .envrc defines use nix and layout python.

direnv should create a venv and auto-load the nix profile. In case of lack of direnv, run nix-shell to enable the default nix profile.

To install dependencies, assume pip works as the system pip:

pip install -r requirements_dev.txt

Dependencies with venv

If one is not using nix, they can use venv:

python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements_dev.txt

Environment variables

A file named .envrc is used to define the environment variables required for this project to function. One can either export it directly or use direnv. There is an example environment file one can copy as base:

cp .envrc.example .envrc

.envrc should contain the following variables:

export DEBUG=1
export SECRET_KEY=some-secret-key
export DATABASE_URL=postgres://mataroa:db-password@db:5432/mataroa
export EMAIL_HOST_USER=smtp-user
export EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD=smtp-password

When on production, also include/update the following variables (see Deployment and Backup):

export DEBUG=0
export PGPASSWORD=db-password

Database

This project is using one PostreSQL database for persistence.

One can use the make pginit command to initialise a database in the postgres-data/ directory.

After setting the DATABASE_URL (see above), create the database schema with:

python manage.py migrate

Initialising the database with some sample development data is possible with:

python manage.py loaddata dev-data

• dev-data is defined in main/fixtures/dev-data.json
• Credentials of the fixtured user are admin / admin.

Subdomains

To develop locally with subdomains, one needs something like this in their /etc/hosts:

127.0.0.1 mataroalocal.blog
127.0.0.1 random.mataroalocal.blog
127.0.0.1 test.mataroalocal.blog
127.0.0.1 mylocalusername.mataroalocal.blog

/etc/hosts does not support wildcard entries, thus there needs to be one entry per mataroa user/blog.

Serve

To run the Django development server:

python manage.py runserver

Docker

If Docker and docker-compose are preferred, then:

1. Set DATABASE_URL in .envrc to postgres://postgres:postgres@db:5432/postgres
2. Run docker-compose up -d.

The database data will be saved in the git-ignored directory / Docker volume docker-postgres-data, located in the root of the project.

Testing

Using the Django test runner:

python manage.py test

For coverage, run:

make cov

Code linting & formatting

The following tools are used for code linting and formatting:

• black for code formatting
• isort for imports order consistency
• flake8 for code linting
• shellcheck for shell scripts

To use:

make format
make lint

Deployment

Deployment is configured using uWSGI and Caddy.

A server playbook document is also available, based on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.

Environment variables for production are defined both in uwsgi.ini (for uWSGI) and in .envrc (for manage.py commands such as migrations and cron management commands).

Note that the deployment is not configured using nix and thus we install dependencies using venv.

cp uwsgi.example.ini uwsgi.ini  # edit environment variables in uwsgi.ini
uwsgi uwsgi.ini  # start djago app
caddy start --config /home/roa/mataroa/Caddyfile  # start caddy server

To reload or stop the uWSGI process:

uwsgi --reload mataroa.pid
uwsgi --stop mataroa.pid

# or find the PID and kill that directly
ps aux|grep uwsgi
kill -9 <PID>

To reload or store the Caddy webserver:

caddy reload --config /home/roa/mataroa/Caddyfile
caddy stop

Also, two cronjobs (used by the email newsletter feature) need to be installed. The schedule is subject to the administrator’s preference. Indicatively:

*/5 * * * * bash -c 'cd /home/roa/mataroa && source ./venv/bin/activate && source .envrc && python manage.py enqueue_notifications'
*/10 * * * * bash -c 'cd /home/roa/mataroa && source ./venv/bin/activate && source .envrc && python manage.py process_notifications'
0 0 1 * * bash -c 'cd /home/roa/mataroa && source ./venv/bin/activate && source .envrc && python manage.py mail_exports'

Documentation about these commands can be found in section Management.

Finally, certain setting variables may need to be redefined:

• ADMINS
• CANONICAL_HOST
• EMAIL_HOST and EMAIL_HOST_BROADCAST

Backup

To automate backup, one can run backup-database.sh which dumps the database and uploads it into any S3-compatible object storage cloud using the MinIO client. This script needs the database password as an environment variable. The key must be PGPASSWORD. The variable can live in .envrc as such:

export PGPASSWORD=db-password

To restore a database dump:

pg_restore -v -h localhost -cO --if-exists -d mataroa -U mataroa -W mataroa.dump

To add on cron:

0 */6 * * * /home/roa/mataroa/backup-database.sh

Management

In addition to the standard Django management commands, there are also:

• enqueue_notifications: create records for notification emails to be sent.
• process_notifications: sends notification emails for new blog posts of existing records.
• mail_exports: emails users of their blog exports.

They are triggered using the standard manage.py Django way; eg:

python manage.py enqueue_notifications

Billing

One can deploy mataroa without setting up billing functionalities. This is the default case. To handle payments and subscriptions this project uses Stripe. To enable Stripe and payments, one needs to have a Stripe account with a single Product (eg. "Mataroa Premium Plan").

To configure, add the following variables from your Stripe account to your .envrc:

export STRIPE_API_KEY="sk_test_XXX"
export STRIPE_PUBLIC_KEY="pk_test_XXX"
export STRIPE_PRICE_ID="price_XXX"

License

This software is licensed under the MIT license. For more information, read the LICENSE file.