Bluemix Promocode Application

Request promo codes with the browser.

Codes are stored in the Bluemix SQL database service (IBM DB2) and sent via email through SendGrid.

Notes

The IBM SQL database, a free DB2 variant, has been deprecated as of 2016-02-23, therefore this application has switched to ElephantSQL, a PostgreSQL variant.

Usage

Create a ElephantSQL database service and SendGrid service in Bluemix, if you haven't already. The app will automatically set up the tables and indexes during startup, if they don't exists.

The code form is protected by reCAPTCHA to prevent bots from requesting codes. You have to request a public/private key from Google and put it in your config file.

# Install JavaScript/CSS dependencies
bower install

# Edit configs
cp bluemix-promocodes/example-config.py bluemix-promocodes/config.py
${EDITOR} bluemix-promocodes/config.py

cp example-manifest.yml manifest.yml
${EDITOR} manifest.yml

# Login into Bluemix
cf api https://api.ng.bluemix.net
cf login -u <user> -o <org> -s <space>

# Push the app
cf push --no-start

# Bind the services to your app
cf bind-service <app> <sendgrid-service>
cf bind-service <app> <sqldb-service>

# Set the CONFIG environment variable
cf set-env <app> CONFIG config.py

# Start the app
cf start <app>

Running the App locally

To run the app locally, you need Python 2 and pip. It is highly recommend that you also use a virtualenv for the dependencies of the app.

Installing the dependencies

# (Recommended) Create a virtualenv
virtualenv -p python2 .venv
. .venv/bin/activate

# Install Python dependencies
pip install -r requirements.txt

Creating a development config

For development, you probably want to use a different configuration, e.g. to run the app in debug mode by setting

DEBUG = True

# Use a separate config file dev-config.py
cp bluemix_promocodes/config.py bluemix_promocodes/dev-config.py
${EDITOR} bluemix_promocodes/dev-config.py

Option 1: Using the Bluemix SQL database

You have two options to run the app locally. You can run it with the remote Bluemix database or a local SQLite database.

To use the remote Bluemix database we need its connection information.

# Obtain the CloudFoundry environment variables
cf env <app>

# Add the VCAP_SERVICES environment variable to run.sh
${EDITOR} run.sh

Option 2: Using a local SQLite database

Instead of using the remote SQL database in Bluemix, which probably contains the production data and has a much bigger latency, a local SQLite database may also be used, just point the SQLALCHEMY_DATABASE_URI in your dev-config.py to a location where you would like your local database to be stored, e.g.:

SQLALCHEMY_DATABASE_URI = 'sqlite:////tmp/test.db'

Run the app

# Run the app with the integrated development server
./run.sh

Admin interface

The admin interface can be reached on the /admin endpoint, i.e. http://localhost/admin/ if you're running locally or https://<app>.mybluemix.net/admin/ if you're running it on Bluemix.

The admin interface is protected with HTTP Basic Auth, the default username is admin and can be changed with the BASIC_AUTH_USERNAME option and the password must be set with the BASIC_AUTH_PASSWORD option.