mflix

This is a short guide on setting up the system and environment dependencies required for the MFlix application to run.

Disclaimer: The dependencies and versions in this project are not maintained. This project is intended for educational purposes and is not intended to be exposed in a network, so use at your own discretion.

Project Structure

Everything you will implement is located in the mflix/db.py file, which contains all database interfacing methods. The API will make calls to db.py to interact with MongoDB.

The unit tests in tests will test these database access methods directly, without going through the API. The UI will run these methods in integration tests, and therefore requires the full application to be running.

The API layer is fully implemented, as is the UI. If you need to run on a port other than 5000, you can edit the index.html file in the build directory to modify the value of window.host.

Please do not modify the API layer in any way, movies.py and user.py under the mflix/api directory. Doing so will most likely result in the frontend application failing to validate some of the labs.

Local Development Environment Configuration

Anaconda

We're going to use Anaconda to install Python 3 and to manage our Python 3 environment.

Installing Anaconda for Mac

You can download Anaconda from their MacOS download site. The installer will give you the option to "Change Install Location", so you can choose the path where the anaconda3 folder will be placed. Remember this location, because you will need it to activate the environment.

Once installed, you will have to create and activate a conda environment:

# navigate to the mflix-python directory
cd mflix-python

# enable the "conda" command in Terminal
echo ". /anaconda3/etc/profile.d/conda.sh" >> ~/.bash_profile
source ~/.bash_profile

# create a new environment for MFlix
conda create --name mflix

# activate the environment
conda activate mflix

You can deactivate the environment with the following command:

conda deactivate

Installing Anaconda for Windows

You can download Anaconda from their Download site. Please be careful to select Windows Tab before downloading.

The Anaconda installer will prompt you to Add Anaconda to your PATH. Select this option to use conda commands from the Command Prompt.

If you forget to select this option before installing, no worries. The installer will let you choose an "Install Location" for Anaconda, which is the directory where the Anaconda3 folder will be placed.

Using your machine's location of Anaconda3 as <path-to-Anaconda3>, run the following commands to activate conda commands from the Command Prompt:

set PATH=%PATH%;<path-to-Anaconda3>;<path-to-Anaconda3>\Scripts\

Once installed, you will have to create and enable a conda environment.

# enter mflix-python folder
cd mflix-python

# create a new environment for MFlix
conda create --name mflix

# activate the environment
activate mflix

You can deactivate the environment with the following command:

deactivate

Virtualenv

Note: If you installed Anaconda instead, skip this step.

As an alternative to Anaconda, you can also use virtualenv, to define your Python 3 environment. You are required to have a Python 3 installed in your workstation.

You can find the virtualenv installation procedure on the PyPA website.

Once you've installed Python 3 and virtualenv, you will have to setup a virtualenv environment:

# navigate to the mflix-python directory
cd mflix-python

# create the virtual environment for MFlix
virtualenv -p YOUR_LOCAL_PYTHON3_PATH mflix_venv

# activate the virtual environment
source mflix_venv/bin/activate

You can deactivate the virtual environment with the following command:

deactivate

Please remember that you may have to reactivate the virtual environment if you open a new Terminal or Command Prompt window, or restart your system.

Python Library Dependencies

Once the Python 3 environment is activated, we need to install our python dependencies. These dependencies are defined in the requirements.txt file, and can be installed with the following command:

pip install -r requirements.txt

Running the Application

In the mflix-python directory there are two files, called dotini_unix and dotini_win.

Rename this file to .ini with the following command:

mv dotini_unix .ini  # on Unix
ren dotini_win .ini # on Windows

Once the file has been renamed, open it, and enter your Atlas SRV connection string as directed in the comment. This is the information the driver will use to connect!

To start MFlix, run the following command:

python run.py

And then point your browser to `http://localhost:5000/<http://localhost:5000/>`_.

Running the Unit Tests

To run the unit tests for this course, you will use pytest. Each course lab contains a module of unit tests that you can call individually with a command like the following:

pytest -m LAB_UNIT_TEST_NAME

Each ticket will contain the command to run that ticket's specific unit tests.

The final home page will look like this: