FragDenStaat.de

FragDenStaat.de is the German instance of Froide – a freedom of information portal software.

Development environment

FragDenStaat.de is a Django app with a PostgreSQL+PostGIS database and elasticsearch search service. There is a production deployment ansible configuration for details.. If you want an easy start, please use the below instructions with Docker (note that this is for convenience and that the actual deployment does not use Docker at the moment).

If you do not want to use Docker, you can install this like any Django project with dependencies and services.

Setup dev environment

FragDenStaat.de is a Django project that uses the core froide project and other froide Django apps as plugins. These froide and related apps are installed from repositories and it makes sense to set them up on your dev machine.

You need to have installed:

• Python 3.12+
• pnpm & npm
• GDAL for Django's GeoDjango
• freetype and imagemagick
• postgresql bindings
• poppler
• qpdf
• ocrmypdf
• pango
• libgeoip
• libmagic
• uv

All of these dependencies should be installable via package managers (e.g. brew on macOS).

To make the setup easier the following script (devsetup.sh) creates a virtual environment, sets up and installs all repos of the Python backend and installs and links all repos of the JavaScript frontend build.

cd project-dir
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/okfde/fragdenstaat_de/main/devsetup.sh | bash

To update your setup later:

cd project-dir
bash fragdenstaat_de/devsetup.sh

Start services

You can run your own Postgres+PostGIS database and Elasticsearch service or run them with Docker.

You need Docker Desktop. Make sure Docker is running and use the following command:

docker compose -f compose-dev.yaml up

This will start Postgres and Elasticsearch and listen on port 5432 and 9200 respectively. You can adjust the port mapping in the compose-dev.yaml.

Setup database

If you need to adjust settings, you can copy the fragdenstaat_de/settings/local_settings.py.example to fragdenstaat_de/settings/local_settings.py and edit it.

To initialise the database:

# Activate virtualenv
source fds-env/bin/activate
cd fragdenstaat_de
# Create database structure
python manage.py migrate --skip-checks

To get started with some data:

# Load initial data (e.g. some CMS test fixtures)
python manage.py loaddata tests/fixtures/cms.json
# Create a superuser
python manage.py createsuperuser
# Create and populate search index
python manage.py search_index --create
python manage.py search_index --populate

Import SQL dumps

Example of loading SQL dumps into Docker postgres:

docker compose -f compose-dev.yaml exec db dropdb -U fragdenstaat_de fragdenstaat_de
docker compose -f compose-dev.yaml exec db createdb -U fragdenstaat_de -O fragdenstaat_de fragdenstaat_de
gunzip -k -c dump.sql.gz | docker compose -f compose-dev.yaml exec -T db psql -U fragdenstaat_de

Quick start after setup

source fds-env/bin/activate
cd fragdenstaat_de
# Start service in background with -d
docker compose -f compose-dev.yaml up -d
python manage.py runserver

Frontend development

cd fragdenstaat_de
pnpm run dev

Upgrade dependencies

make dependencies

Main app dependencies

The fragdenstaat_de project depends on froide, multiple froide-related apps.

flowchart LR
    fragdenstaat_de[[fragdenstaat_de]]-->froide
    fragdenstaat_de-->froideapp[froide-*]
    froideapp-->froide
    froide-->filingcabinet[[django-filingcabinet]]
    fragdenstaat_de-->cms([django-cms])

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License

Froide and fragdenstaat_de are licensed under the AGPL License.