Implementing Notifications in Open Event Server

In FOSSASIA’s Open Event Server project, along with emails, almost all actions have necessary user notifications as well. So, when a new session is created or a session is accepted by the event organisers, along with the email, a user notification is also sent. Though showing the user notification is mainly implemented in the frontend site but the content to be shown and on which action to show is strictly decided by the server project.

A notification essentially helps an user to get the necessary information while staying in the platform itself and not needing to go to check his/her email for every action he performs. So unlike email which acts as a backup for the informations, notification is more of an instant thing.

The API

The Notifications API is mostly like all other JSON API endpoints in the open event project. However in Notifications API we do not allow any to send a POST request. The admin of the server is able to send a GET a request to view all the notifications that are there in the system while a user can only view his/her notification. As of PATCH we allow only the user to edit his/her notification to mark it as read or not read. Following is the schema for the API:

class NotificationSchema(Schema):
    """
    API Schema for Notification Model
    """

    class Meta:
        """
        Meta class for Notification API schema
        """
        type_ = 'notification'
        self_view = 'v1.notification_detail'
        self_view_kwargs = {'id': '<id>'}
        self_view_many = 'v1.microlocation_list_post'
        inflect = dasherize

    id = fields.Str(dump_only=True)
    title = fields.Str(allow_none=True, dump_only=True)
    message = fields.Str(allow_none=True, dump_only=True)
    received_at = fields.DateTime(dump_only=True)
    accept = fields.Str(allow_none=True, dump_only=True)
    is_read = fields.Boolean()
    user = Relationship(attribute='user',
                        self_view='v1.notification_user',
                        self_view_kwargs={'id': '<id>'},
                        related_view='v1.user_detail',
                        related_view_kwargs={'notification_id': '<id>'},
                        schema='UserSchema',
                        type_='user'
                        )


The main things that are shown in the notification from the frontend are the
title and message. The title is the text that is shown without expanding the entire notification that gives an overview about the message in case you don’t want to read the entire message. The message however provides the entire detail that is associated with the action performed. The user relationship stores which user the particular notification is related with. It is a one-to-one relationship where one notification can only belong to one user. However one user can have multiple notifications. Another important attribute is the is_read attribute. This is the only attribute that is allowed to be changed. By default, when we make an entry in the database, is_read is set to FALSE. Once an user has read the notification, a request is sent from the frontend to change is_read to TRUE.

The different actions for which we send notification are stored in the models/notification.py file as global variables.

USER_CHANGE_EMAIL = "User email"'
NEW_SESSION = 'New Session Proposal'
PASSWORD_CHANGE = 'Change Password'
EVENT_ROLE = 'Event Role Invitation'
TICKET_PURCHASED = 'Ticket(s) Purchased'
TICKET_PURCHASED_ATTENDEE = 'Ticket(s) purchased to Attendee    '
EVENT_EXPORTED = 'Event Exported'
EVENT_EXPORT_FAIL = 'Event Export Failed'
EVENT_IMPORTED = 'Event Imported'

HTML Templates

The notification title and message that is stored in the database and later served via the Notification API is created using some string formatting HTML templates. We firstly import all the global variables that represent the various actions from the notification model. Then we declare a global dict type variable named NOTIFS which stores all title and messages to be stored in the notification table.

NEW_SESSION: {
        'title': u'New session proposal for {event_name}',
        'message': u"""The event <strong>{event_name}</strong> has received
             a new session proposal.<br><br>
            <a href='{link}' class='btn btn-info btn-sm'>View Session</a>""",
        'recipient': 'Organizer',
    },


This is an example of the contents stored inside the dict. For every action, there is a dict with attributes
title, message and recipient. Title contains the brief overview of the entire notification whereas message contains a more vivid description with proper links. Recipient contains the one who receives the notification. So for example in the above code snippet, it is a notification for a new session created. The notification goes to the organizer. The title and message contains named placeholders which are later replaced by particular values using python’s .format() function.

Notification Helper

Notification helper module contains two main parts :-

  1. A parent function which saves the notification to the table related to the user to whom the notification belongs.
  2. Individual notification helper functions that are used by the APIs to save notification after various actions are performed.

Parent Function

def send_notification(user, action, title, message):
    if not current_app.config['TESTING']:
        notification = Notification(user_id=user.id,
                                    title=title,
                                    message=message,
                                    action=action
                                    )
        save_to_db(notification, msg="Notification saved")
        record_activity('notification_event', user=user, action=action, title=title)


send_notification
() is the parent function which takes as parameters user, action, title and message and stores them in the notification table in the database. The user is the one to whom the notification belongs to, action represents the particular action in an API which triggered the notification. Title and message are the contents that are shown in the frontend in the form of a notification. The frontend can implement it as a dropdown notification like facebook or a desktop notification like gitter or whatsapp. After the notification is saved we also update the activity table with the action that a notification has been saved for a user with the following action and title. Later, the Notification API mentioned in the very beginning of the blog uses this data that is being stored now and serves it as a JSON response.

Individual Functions

Apart from this, we have individual functions that uses the parent function to store notifications particular to a particular actions. For example, we have a send_notif_new_session_organizer() function which is used to save notification for all the organizers of an event that a new session has been added to their particular event. This function is called when a POST request is made in the Sessions API and the data is saved successfully. The function is executed for all the organizers of the event for which the session has been created.

def send_notif_new_session_organizer(user, event_name, link):
    message_settings = MessageSettings.query.filter_by(action=NEW_SESSION).first()
    if not message_settings or message_settings.notification_status == 1:
        notif = NOTIFS[NEW_SESSION]
        action = NEW_SESSION
        title = notif['title'].format(event_name=event_name)
        message = notif['message'].format(event_name=event_name, link=link)

        send_notification(user, action, title, message)


In the above function, we take in 3 parameters, user, event_name and link. The value of the user parameter is used to link the notification to that particular user. Event_name and link are used in the title and message of the notification that is saved in the database. Firstly in the function we check if there is certain message setting which tells that the user doesn’t want to receive notifications related to new sessions being created. If not, we proceed. We get the title and message strings from the NOTIFS dict from the system_notification.py file.

After that, using string formatting we get the actual message. For example,

u'New session proposal for {event_name}'.format(‘FOSSASIA’)

would give us a resulting string of the form:

u'New session proposal for FOSSASIA'

After this, we use this variables and send them as parameters to the send_notification() parent function to save the notification properly.

 

Reference:

Continue ReadingImplementing Notifications in Open Event Server

Implement Email in Open Event Server

In FOSSASIA’s Open Event Server project, we send out emails when various different actions are performed using the API. For example, when a new user is created, he/she receives an email welcoming him to the server as well as an email verification email. Users get role invites from event organisers in the form of emails, when someone buys a ticket he/she gets a PDF link to the ticket as email. So as you can understand all the important informations that are necessary to be notified to the user are sent as an email to the user and sometimes to the organizer as well.

In FOSSASIA, we use sendgrid’s API or an SMTP server depending on the admin settings for sending emails. You can read more about how we use sendgrid’s API to send emails in FOSSASIA here. Now let’s dive into the modules that we have for sending the emails. The three main parts in the entire email sending are:

  1. Model – Storing the Various Actions
  2. Templates – Storing the HTML templates for the emails
  3. Email Functions – Individual functions for various different actions

Let’s go through each of these modules one by one.

Model

USER_REGISTER = 'User Registration'
USER_CONFIRM = 'User Confirmation'
USER_CHANGE_EMAIL = "User email"
INVITE_PAPERS = 'Invitation For Papers'
NEXT_EVENT = 'Next Event'
NEW_SESSION = 'New Session Proposal'
PASSWORD_RESET = 'Reset Password'
PASSWORD_CHANGE = 'Change Password'
EVENT_ROLE = 'Event Role Invitation'
SESSION_ACCEPT_REJECT = 'Session Accept or Reject'
SESSION_SCHEDULE = 'Session Schedule Change'
EVENT_PUBLISH = 'Event Published'
AFTER_EVENT = 'After Event'
USER_REGISTER_WITH_PASSWORD = 'User Registration during Payment'
TICKET_PURCHASED = 'Ticket(s) Purchased'


In the Model file, named as
mail.py, we firstly declare the various different actions for which we send the emails out. These actions are globally used as the keys in the other modules of the email sending service. Here, we define global variables with the name of the action as strings in them. These are all constant variables, which means that there value remains throughout and never changes. For example, USER_REGISTER has the value ‘User Registration’, which essentially means that anything related to the USER_REGISTER key is executed when the User Registration action occurs. Or in other words, whenever an user registers into the system by signing up or creating a new user through the API, he/she receives the corresponding emails.
Apart from this, we have the model class which defines a table in the database. We use this model class to store the actions performed while sending emails in the database. So we store the action, the time at which the email was sent, the recipient and the sender. That way we have a record about all the emails that were sent out via our server.

class Mail(db.Model):
    __tablename__ = 'mails'
    id = db.Column(db.Integer, primary_key=True)
    recipient = db.Column(db.String)
    time = db.Column(db.DateTime(timezone=True))
    action = db.Column(db.String)
    subject = db.Column(db.String)
    message = db.Column(db.String)

    def __init__(self, recipient=None, time=None, action=None, subject=None,
                 message=None):
        self.recipient = recipient
        self.time = time
        if self.time is None:
            self.time = datetime.now(pytz.utc)
        self.action = action
        self.subject = subject
        self.message = message

    def __repr__(self):
        return '<Mail %r to %r>' % (self.id, self.recipient)

    def __str__(self):
        return unicode(self).encode('utf-8')

    def __unicode__(self):
        return 'Mail %r by %r' % (self.id, self.recipient,)


The table name in which all the information is stored is named as mails. It stores the recipient, the time at which the email is sent (timezone aware), the action which initiated the email sending, the subject of the email and the entire html body of the email. In case a datetime value is sent, we use that, else we use the current time in the time field.

HTML Templates

We store the html templates in the form of key value pairs in a file called system_mails.py inside the helpers module of the API. Inside the system_mails, we have a global dict variable named MAILS as shown below.

MAILS = {
    EVENT_PUBLISH: {
        'recipient': 'Organizer, Speaker',
        'subject': u'{event_name} is Live',
        'message': (
            u"Hi {email}<br/>" +
            u"Event, {event_name}, is up and running and ready for action. Go ahead and check it out." +
            u"<br/> Visit this link to view it: {link}"
        )
    },
    INVITE_PAPERS: {
        'recipient': 'Speaker',
        'subject': u'Invitation to Submit Papers for {event_name}',
        'message': (
            u"Hi {email}<br/>" +
            u"You are invited to submit papers for event: {event_name}" +
            u"<br/> Visit this link to fill up details: {link}"
        )
    },
    SESSION_ACCEPT_REJECT: {
        'recipient': 'Speaker',
        'subject': u'Session {session_name} has been {acceptance}',
        'message': (
            u"Hi {email},<br/>" +
            u"The session <strong>{session_name}</strong> has been <strong>{acceptance}</strong> by the organizer. " +
            u"<br/> Visit this link to view the session: {link}"
        )
    },
    SESSION_SCHEDULE: {
        'recipient': 'Organizer, Speaker',
        'subject': u'Schedule for Session {session_name} has been changed',
        'message': (
            u"Hi {email},<br/>" +
            u"The schedule for session <strong>{session_name}</strong> has been changed. " +
            u"<br/> Visit this link to view the session: {link}"
        )
    },


Inside the MAILS dict, we have key-value pairs, where in keys we use the global variables from the Model to define the action related to the email template. In the value, we again have 3 different key-value pairs – recipient, subject and message. The recipient defines the group who should receive this email, the subject goes into the subject part of the email while message forms the body for the email. For subject and message we use unicode strings with named placeholders that are used later for formatting using python’s
.format() function.

Email Functions

This is the most important part of the entire email sending system since this is the place where the entire email sending functionality is implemented using the above two modules. We have all these functions inside a single file namely mail.py inside the helpers module of the API. Firstly, we import two things in this file – The global dict variable MAILS defined in the template file above, and the various global action variables defined in the model. There is one main module which is used by every other individual modules for sending the emails defined as send_email(to, action, subject, html). This function takes as parameters the email to which the email is to be sent, the subject string, the html body string along with the action to store it in the database.

Firstly we ensure that the email address for the recipient is present and isn’t an empty string. After we have ensured this, we retrieve the email service as set in the admin settings. It can either be “smtp” or “sendgrid”. The email address for the sender has different formatting depending on the email service we are using. While sendgrid uses just the email say for example “medomag20@gmail.com”, smtp uses a format  a little different like this: Medozonuo Suohu<medomag20@gmail.com>. So we set that as well in the email_from variable.

def send_email(to, action, subject, html):
    """
    Sends email and records it in DB
    """
    if not string_empty(to):
        email_service = get_settings()['email_service']
        email_from_name = get_settings()['email_from_name']
        if email_service == 'smtp':
            email_from = email_from_name + '<' + get_settings()['email_from'] + '>'
        else:
            email_from = get_settings()['email_from']
        payload = {
            'to': to,
            'from': email_from,
            'subject': subject,
            'html': html
        }

        if not current_app.config['TESTING']:
            if email_service == 'smtp':
                smtp_encryption = get_settings()['smtp_encryption']
                if smtp_encryption == 'tls':
                    smtp_encryption = 'required'
                elif smtp_encryption == 'ssl':
                    smtp_encryption = 'ssl'
                elif smtp_encryption == 'tls_optional':
                    smtp_encryption = 'optional'
                else:
                    smtp_encryption = 'none'

                config = {
                    'host': get_settings()['smtp_host'],
                    'username': get_settings()['smtp_username'],
                    'password': get_settings()['smtp_password'],
                    'encryption': smtp_encryption,
                    'port': get_settings()['smtp_port'],
                }

                from tasks import send_mail_via_smtp_task
                send_mail_via_smtp_task.delay(config, payload)


After this we create the payload containing the email address for the recipient, the email address of the sender, the subject of the email and the html body of the email.
For unittesting and any other testing we avoid email sending since that is really not required in the flow. So we check that the current app is not configured to run in a testing environment. After that we have two different implementation depending on the email service used.

SMTP

There are 3 kind of possible encryptions for the email that can be used with smtp server – tls, ssl and optional. We determine this based on the admin settings again. Also, from the admin settings we collect the host, username, password and port for the smtp server.

After this we start a celery task for sending the email. Since email sending to a number of clients can be time consuming so we do it using the celery queueing service without disturbing the main workflow of the entire system.

@celery.task(name='send.email.post.smtp')
def send_mail_via_smtp_task(config, payload):
    mailer_config = {
        'transport': {
            'use': 'smtp',
            'host': config['host'],
            'username': config['username'],
            'password': config['password'],
            'tls': config['encryption'],
            'port': config['port']
        }
    }

    mailer = Mailer(mailer_config)
    mailer.start()
    message = Message(author=payload['from'], to=payload['to'])
    message.subject = payload['subject']
    message.plain = strip_tags(payload['html'])
    message.rich = payload['html']
    mailer.send(message)
    mailer.stop()

Inside the celery task, we use the Mailer and Message classes from the marrow module of python. We configure the Mailer according to the various settings received from the admin and then use the payload to send the email.

Sendgrid

For sending email using the sendgrid API, we need to set the Bearer key which is used for authenticating the email service. This key is also defined in the admin settings. After we have set the Bearer key as the authorization header, we again initiate the celery task corresponding to the sendgrid email sending service.

@celery.task(name='send.email.post')
def send_email_task(payload, headers):
    requests.post(
        "https://api.sendgrid.com/api/mail.send.json",
        data=payload,
        headers=headers
    )


For sending the email service, all we need to do is make a POST request to the api endpoint “
https://api.sendgrid.com/api/mail.send.json” with the headers which contains the Bearer Key and the data which contains the payload containing all the information related to the recipient, sender, subject of email and the body of the email.

Apart from these, this module implements all the individual functions that are called based on the various functions that occur. For example, let’s look into the email sending function in case a new session is created.

def send_email_new_session(email, event_name, link):
    """email for new session"""
    send_email(
        to=email,
        action=NEW_SESSION,
        subject=MAILS[NEW_SESSION]['subject'].format(
            event_name=event_name
        ),
        html=MAILS[NEW_SESSION]['message'].format(
            email=email,
            event_name=event_name,
            link=link
        )
    )


This function is called inside the Sessions API, for every speaker of the session as well as for every organizer of the event to which the session is submitted. Inside this function, we use the
send_email().  But firstly we need to create the subject of the email and the message body of the email using the templates and by replacing placeholders by actual value using python formatting. MAILS[NEW_SESSION] returns a unicode string: u’New session proposal for {event_name}’ . So what we do is use the .format() function to replace {event_name} by the actual event_name received as parameter. So it is equivalent to doing something like:

u'New session proposal for {event_name}'.format(‘FOSSASIA’)

which would give us a resulting string of the form:

u'New session proposal for FOSSASIA'

Similarly, we create the html message body using the templates and the parameters received. After this is done, we make a function call to send_email()  which then sends the final email.

References:

Continue ReadingImplement Email in Open Event Server

Create Event by Importing JSON files in Open Event Server

Apart from the usual way of creating an event in  FOSSASIA’s Orga Server project by using POST requests in Events API, another way of creating events is importing a zip file which is an archive of multiple JSON files. This way you can create a large event like FOSSASIA with lots of data related to sessions, speakers, microlocations, sponsors just by uploading JSON files to the system. Sample JSON file can be found in the open-event project of FOSSASIA. The basic workflow of importing an event and how it works is as follows:

  • First step is similar to uploading files to the server. We need to send a POST request with a multipart form data with the zipped archive containing the JSON files.
  • The POST request starts a celery task to start importing data from JSON files and storing them in the database.
  • The celery task URL is returned as a response to the POST request. You can use this celery task for polling purposes to get the status. If the status is FAILURE, we get the error text along with it. If status is SUCCESS we get the resulting event data
  • In the celery task, each JSON file is read separately and the data is stored in the db with the proper relations.
  • Sending a GET request to the above mentioned celery task, after the task has been completed returns the event id along with the event URL.

Let’s see how each of these points work in the background.

Uploading ZIP containing JSON Files

For uploading a zip archive instead of sending a JSON data in the POST request we send a multipart form data. The multipart/form-data format of sending data allows an entire file to be sent as a data in the POST request along with the relevant file informations. One can know about various form content types here .

An example cURL request looks something like this:

curl -H "Authorization: JWT <access token>" -X POST -F 'file=@event1.zip' http://localhost:5000/v1/events/import/json

The above cURL request uploads a file event1.zip from your current directory with the key as ‘file’ to the endpoint /v1/events/import/json. The user uploading the feels needs to have a JWT authentication key or in other words be logged in to the system as it is necessary to create an event.

@import_routes.route('/events/import/<string:source_type>', methods=['POST'])
@jwt_required()
def import_event(source_type):
    if source_type == 'json':
        file_path = get_file_from_request(['zip'])
    else:
        file_path = None
        abort(404)
    from helpers.tasks import import_event_task
    task = import_event_task.delay(email=current_identity.email, file=file_path,
                                   source_type=source_type, creator_id=current_identity.id)
    # create import job
    create_import_job(task.id)

    # if testing
    if current_app.config.get('CELERY_ALWAYS_EAGER'):
        TASK_RESULTS[task.id] = {
            'result': task.get(),
            'state': task.state
        }
    return jsonify(
        task_url=url_for('tasks.celery_task', task_id=task.id)
    )


After the request is received we check if a file exists in the key ‘file’ of the form-data. If it is there, we save the file and get the path to the saved file. Then we send this path over to the celery task and run the task with the
.delay() function of celery. After the celery task is started, the corresponding data about the import job is stored in the database for future debugging and logging purposes. After this we return the task url for the celery task that we started.

Celery Task to Import Data

Just like exporting of event, importing is also a time consuming task and we don’t want other application requests to be paused because of this task. Hence, we use a celery queue to execute this task. Whenever an import task is started, it is added to the celery queue. When it comes to the front of the queue it is executed.

For importing, we have created a celery task, import.event which calls the import_event_task_base() function that uses the import helper functions to get the data from JSON files imported and saved in the DB. After the task is completed, we update the import job data in the table with the status as either SUCCESS or FAILURE depending on the outcome of the celery task.

As a result of the celery task, the newly created event’s id and the frontend link from where we can visit the url is returned. This along with the status of the celery task is returned as the response for a GET request on the celery task. If the celery task fails, then the state is changed to FAILURE and the error which the celery faced is returned as the error message in the result key. We also print an error traceback in the celery worker.

@celery.task(base=RequestContextTask, name='import.event', bind=True, throws=(BaseError,))
def import_event_task(self, file, source_type, creator_id):
    """Import Event Task"""
    task_id = self.request.id.__str__()  # str(async result)
    try:
        result = import_event_task_base(self, file, source_type, creator_id)
        update_import_job(task_id, result['id'], 'SUCCESS')
        # return item
    except BaseError as e:
        print(traceback.format_exc())
        update_import_job(task_id, e.message, e.status if hasattr(e, 'status') else 'failure')
        result = {'__error': True, 'result': e.to_dict()}
    except Exception as e:
        print(traceback.format_exc())
        update_import_job(task_id, e.message, e.status if hasattr(e, 'status') else 'failure')
        result = {'__error': True, 'result': ServerError().to_dict()}
    # send email
    send_import_mail(task_id, result)
    # return result
    return result

 

Save Data from JSON

In import helpers, we have the functions which perform the main task of reading the JSON files, creating sqlalchemy model objects from them and saving them in the database. There are few global dictionaries which help maintain the order in which the files are to be imported and saved and also the file vs model mapping. The first JSON file to be imported is the event JSON file. Since all the other tables to be imported are related to the event table so first we read the event JSON file. After that the order in which the files are read is as follows:

  1. SocialLink
  2. CustomForms
  3. Microlocation
  4. Sponsor
  5. Speaker
  6. Track
  7. SessionType
  8. Session

This order helps maintain the foreign constraints. For importing data from these files we use the function create_service_from_json(). It sorts the elements in the data list  based on the key “id”. It then loops over all the elements or dictionaries contained in the data list. In each iteration delete the unnecessary key-value pairs from the dictionary. Then set the event_id for that element to the id of the newly created event from import instead of the old id present in the data.  After all this is done, create a model object based on the mapping with the filename with the dict data. Then save that model data into the database.

def create_service_from_json(task_handle, data, srv, event_id, service_ids=None):
    """
    Given :data as json, create the service on server
    :service_ids are the mapping of ids of already created services.
        Used for mapping old ids to new
    """
    if service_ids is None:
        service_ids = {}
    global CUR_ID
    # sort by id
    data.sort(key=lambda k: k['id'])
    ids = {}
    ct = 0
    total = len(data)
    # start creating
    for obj in data:
        # update status
        ct += 1
        update_state(task_handle, 'Importing %s (%d/%d)' % (srv[0], ct, total))
        # trim id field
        old_id, obj = _trim_id(obj)
        CUR_ID = old_id
        # delete not needed fields
        obj = _delete_fields(srv, obj)
        # related
        obj = _fix_related_fields(srv, obj, service_ids)
        obj['event_id'] = event_id
        # create object
        new_obj = srv[1](**obj)
        db.session.add(new_obj)
        db.session.commit()
        ids[old_id] = new_obj.id
        # add uploads to queue
        _upload_media_queue(srv, new_obj)

    return ids


After the data has been saved, the next thing to do is upload all the media files to the server. This we do using the
_upload_media_queue()  function. It takes paths to upload the files to from the storage.py helper file for APIs. Then it uploads the files using the various helper functions to the static data storage services like AWS S3, Google storage, etc.

Other than this, the import helpers also contains the function to create an import job that keeps a record of all the imports along with the task url and the user id of the user who started the importing task. It also stores the status of the task. Then there is the get_file_from_request()  function which saves the file that is uploaded through the POST request and returns the path to that file.

Get Response about Event Imported

The POST request returns a task url of the form /v1/tasks/ebe07632-392b-4ae9-8501-87ac27258ce5. To get the final result, you need to keep polling this URL. To know more about polling read my previous blog about exporting event or visit this link. So when the task is completed you would get a “result” key along with the status. The state can either be SUCCESS or FAILURE. If it is a FAILURE you will get a corresponding error message due to which the celery task failed. If it is a success then you get data related to the corresponding event that was created because of import. The data returned are the event id, event name and the event url which you can use to visit the event from the frontend. This data is also sent to the user as an email and notification.

An example response looks something like this:

{ 
    “result”: {
“event_name” : “FOSSASIA 2016”,
     “id” : “24”,
     “url” : “https://eventyay.com/events/ab3de6
},
    “state” : “SUCCESS”
}

The corresponding event name and the url is also sent to the user who started the import task. From the frontend, one can use the object value of the result to show the name of the event that is imported along with providing the event url. Since the id and identifier are both present in the result returned one can also make use of them to send GET, PATCH and other API requests to the events/ endpoint and get the corresponding relationship urls from it to query the other APIs. Thus, the entire data that is imported gets available to the frontend as well.

 

Reference Links:

 

Continue ReadingCreate Event by Importing JSON files in Open Event Server

Export an Event using APIs of Open Event Server

We in FOSSASIA’s Open Event Server project, allow the organizer, co-organizer and the admins to export all the data related to an event in the form of an archive of JSON files. This way the data can be reused in some other place for various different purposes. The basic workflow is something like this:

  • Send a POST request in the /events/{event_id}/export/json with a payload containing whether you require the various media files.
  • The POST request starts a celery task in the background to start extracting data related to event and jsonifying them
  • The celery task url is returned as a response. Sending a GET request to this url gives the status of the task. If the status is either FAILED or SUCCESS then there is the corresponding error message or the result.
  • Separate JSON files for events, speakers, sessions, micro-locations, tracks, session types and custom forms are created.
  • All this files are then archived and the zip is then served on the endpoint /events/{event_id}/exports/{path}
  • Sending a GET request to the above mentioned endpoint downloads a zip containing all the data related to the endpoint.

Let’s dive into each of these points one-by-one

POST request ( /events/{event_id}/export/json)

For making a POST request you firstly need a JWT authentication like most of the other API endpoints. You need to send a payload containing the settings for whether you want the media files related with the event to be downloaded along with the JSON files. An example payload looks like this:

{
   "image": true,
   "video": true,
   "document": true,
   "audio": true
 }

def export_event(event_id):
    from helpers.tasks import export_event_task

    settings = EXPORT_SETTING
    settings['image'] = request.json.get('image', False)
    settings['video'] = request.json.get('video', False)
    settings['document'] = request.json.get('document', False)
    settings['audio'] = request.json.get('audio', False)
    # queue task
    task = export_event_task.delay(
        current_identity.email, event_id, settings)
    # create Job
    create_export_job(task.id, event_id)

    # in case of testing
    if current_app.config.get('CELERY_ALWAYS_EAGER'):
        # send_export_mail(event_id, task.get())
        TASK_RESULTS[task.id] = {
            'result': task.get(),
            'state': task.state
        }
    return jsonify(
        task_url=url_for('tasks.celery_task', task_id=task.id)
    )


Taking the settings about the media files and the event id, we pass them as parameter to the export event celery task and queue up the task. We then create an entry in the database with the task url and the event id and the user who triggered the export to keep a record of the activity. After that we return as response the url for the celery task to the user.

If the celery task is still underway it show a response with ‘state’:’WAITING’. Once, the task is completed, the value of ‘state’ is either ‘FAILED’ or ‘SUCCESS’. If it is SUCCESS it returns the result of the task, in this case the download url for the zip.

Celery Task to Export Event

Exporting an event is a very time consuming process and we don’t want that this process to come in the way of user interaction with other services. So we needed to use a queueing system that would queue the tasks and execute them in the background with disturbing the main worker from executing the other user requests. We have used celery to queue tasks in the background and execute them without disturbing the other user requests.

We have created a celery task namely “export.event” which calls the event_export_task_base() which in turn calls the export_event_json() where all the jsonification process is carried out. To start the celery task all we do is export_event_task.delay(event_id, settings) and it return a celery task object with a task id that can be used to check the status of the task.

@celery.task(base=RequestContextTask, name='export.event', bind=True)
def export_event_task(self, email, event_id, settings):
    event = safe_query(db, Event, 'id', event_id, 'event_id')
    try:
        logging.info('Exporting started')
        path = event_export_task_base(event_id, settings)
        # task_id = self.request.id.__str__()  # str(async result)
        download_url = path

        result = {
            'download_url': download_url
        }
        logging.info('Exporting done.. sending email')
        send_export_mail(email=email, event_name=event.name, download_url=download_url)
    except Exception as e:
        print(traceback.format_exc())
        result = {'__error': True, 'result': str(e)}
        logging.info('Error in exporting.. sending email')
        send_export_mail(email=email, event_name=event.name, error_text=str(e))

    return result


After exporting a path to the export zip is returned. We then get the downloading endpoint and return it as the result of the celery task. In case there is an error in the celery task, we print an entire traceback in the celery worker and return the error as a result.

Make the Exported Zip Ready

We have a separate export_helpers.py file in the helpers module of API for performing various tasks related to exporting all the data of the event. The most important function in this file is the export_event_json(). This file accepts the event_id and the settings dictionary. In the export helpers we have global constant dictionaries which contain the order in which the fields are to appear in the JSON files created while exporting.

Firstly, we create the directory for storing the exported JSON and finally the archive of all the JSON files. Then we have a global dictionary named EXPORTS which contains all the tables and their corresponding Models which we want to extract from the database and store as JSON.  From the EXPORTS dict we get the Model names. We use this Models to make queries with the given event_id and retrieve the data from the database. After retrieving data, we use another helper function named _order_json which jsonifies the sqlalchemy data in the order that is mentioned in the dictionary. After this we download the media data, i.e. the slides, images, videos etc. related to that particular Model depending on the settings.

def export_event_json(event_id, settings):
    """
    Exports the event as a zip on the server and return its path
    """
    # make directory
    exports_dir = app.config['BASE_DIR'] + '/static/uploads/exports/'
    if not os.path.isdir(exports_dir):
        os.mkdir(exports_dir)
    dir_path = exports_dir + 'event%d' % int(event_id)
    if os.path.isdir(dir_path):
        shutil.rmtree(dir_path, ignore_errors=True)
    os.mkdir(dir_path)
    # save to directory
    for e in EXPORTS:
        if e[0] == 'event':
            query_obj = db.session.query(e[1]).filter(
                e[1].id == event_id).first()
            data = _order_json(dict(query_obj.__dict__), e)
            _download_media(data, 'event', dir_path, settings)
        else:
            query_objs = db.session.query(e[1]).filter(
                e[1].event_id == event_id).all()
            data = [_order_json(dict(query_obj.__dict__), e) for query_obj in query_objs]
            for count in range(len(data)):
                data[count] = _order_json(data[count], e)
                _download_media(data[count], e[0], dir_path, settings)
        data_str = json.dumps(data, indent=4, ensure_ascii=False).encode('utf-8')
        fp = open(dir_path + '/' + e[0], 'w')
        fp.write(data_str)
        fp.close()
    # add meta
    data_str = json.dumps(
        _generate_meta(), sort_keys=True,
        indent=4, ensure_ascii=False
    ).encode('utf-8')
    fp = open(dir_path + '/meta', 'w')
    fp.write(data_str)
    fp.close()
    # make zip
    shutil.make_archive(dir_path, 'zip', dir_path)
    dir_path = dir_path + ".zip"

    storage_path = UPLOAD_PATHS['exports']['zip'].format(
        event_id=event_id
    )
    uploaded_file = UploadedFile(dir_path, dir_path.rsplit('/', 1)[1])
    storage_url = upload(uploaded_file, storage_path)

    return storage_url


After we receive the json data from the _order_json() function, we create a dump of the json using json.dumps with an indentation of 4 spaces and utf-8 encoding. Then we save this dump in a file named according to the model from which the data was retrieved. This process is repeated for all the models that are mentioned in the EXPORTS dictionary. After all the JSON files are created and all the media is downloaded, we make a zip of the folder.

To do this we use shutil.make_archive. It creates a zip and uploads the zip to the storage service used by the server such as S3, google storage, etc. and returns the url for the zip through which it can be accessed.

Apart from this function, the other major function in this file is to create an export job entry in the database so that we can keep a track about which used started a task related to which event and help us in debugging and security purposes.

Downloading the Zip File

After the exporting is completed, if you send a GET request to the task url, you get a response similar to this:

{
   "result": {
     "download_url": "http://localhost:5000/static/media/exports/1/zip/OGpMM0w2RH/event1.zip"
   },
   "state": "SUCCESS"
 }

So on opening the download url in the browser or using any other tool, you can download the zip file.

One big question however remains is, all the workflow is okay but how do you understand after sending the POST request, that the task is completed and ready to be downloaded? One way of solving this problem is a technique known as polling. In polling what we do is we send a GET request repeatedly after every fixed interval of time. So, what we do is from the POST request we get the url for the export task. You keep polling this task url until the state is either “FAILED” or “SUCCESS”. If it is a SUCCESS you append the download url somewhere in your website which can then clicked to download the archived export of the event.

 

Reference:

 

Continue ReadingExport an Event using APIs of Open Event Server

Uploading Files via APIs in the Open Event Server

There are two file upload endpoints. One is endpoint for image upload and the other is for all other files being uploaded. The latter endpoint is to be used for uploading files such as slides, videos and other presentation materials for a session. So, in FOSSASIA’s Orga Server project, when we need to upload a file, we make an API request to this endpoint which is turn uploads the file to the server and returns back the url for the uploaded file. We then store this url for the uploaded file to the database with the corresponding row entry.

Sending Data

The endpoint /upload/file  accepts a POST request, containing a multipart/form-data payload. If there is a single file that is uploaded, then it is uploaded under the key “file” else an array of file is sent under the key “files”.

A typical single file upload cURL request would look like this:

curl -H “Authorization: JWT <key>” -F file=@file.pdf -x POST http://localhost:5000/v1/upload/file

A typical multi-file upload cURL request would look something like this:

curl -H “Authorization: JWT <key>” -F files=@file1.pdf -F files=@file2.pdf -x POST http://localhost:5000/v1/upload/file

Thus, unlike other endpoints in open event orga server project, we don’t send a json encoded request. Instead it is a form data request.

Saving Files

We use different services such as S3, google cloud storage and so on for storing the files depending on the admin settings as decided by the admin of the project. One can even ask to save the files locally by passing a GET parameter force_local=true. So, in the backend we have 2 cases to tackle- Single File Upload and Multiple Files Upload.

Single File Upload

if 'file' in request.files:
        files = request.files['file']
        file_uploaded = uploaded_file(files=files)
        if force_local == 'true':
            files_url = upload_local(
                file_uploaded,
                UPLOAD_PATHS['temp']['event'].format(uuid=uuid.uuid4())
            )
        else:
            files_url = upload(
                file_uploaded,
                UPLOAD_PATHS['temp']['event'].format(uuid=uuid.uuid4())
            )


We get the file, that is to be uploaded using
request.files[‘file’] with the key as ‘file’ which was used in the payload. Then we use the uploaded_file() helper function to convert the file data received as payload into a proper file and store it in a temporary storage. After this, if force_local is set as true, we use the upload_local helper function to upload it to the local storage, i.e. the server where the application is hosted, else we use whatever service is set by the admin in the admin settings.

In uploaded_file() function of helpers module, we extract the filename and the extension of the file from the form-data payload. Then we check if the suitable directory already exists. If it doesn’t exist, we create a new directory and then save the file in the directory

extension = files.filename.split('.')[1]
        filename = get_file_name() + '.' + extension
        filedir = current_app.config.get('BASE_DIR') + '/static/uploads/'
        if not os.path.isdir(filedir):
            os.makedirs(filedir)
        file_path = filedir + filename
        files.save(file_path)


After that the upload function gets the settings key for either s3 or google storage and then uses the corresponding functions to upload this temporary file to the storage.

Multiple File Upload

 elif 'files[]' in request.files:
        files = request.files.getlist('files[]')
        files_uploaded = uploaded_file(files=files, multiple=True)
        files_url = []
        for file_uploaded in files_uploaded:
            if force_local == 'true':
                files_url.append(upload_local(
                    file_uploaded,
                    UPLOAD_PATHS['temp']['event'].format(uuid=uuid.uuid4())
                ))
            else:
                files_url.append(upload(
                    file_uploaded,
                    UPLOAD_PATHS['temp']['event'].format(uuid=uuid.uuid4())
                ))


In case of multiple files upload, we get a list of files instead of a single file. Hence we get the list of files sent as form data using
request.files.getlist(‘files[]’). Here ‘files’ is the key that is used and since it is an array of file content, hence it is written as files[]. We again use the uploaded_file() function to get back a list of temporary files from the content that has been uploaded as form-data. After that we loop over all the temporary files that are stored in the variable files_uploaded in the above code. Next, for every file in the list of temporary files, we use the upload() helper function to save these files in the storage system of the application.

In the uploaded_file() function of the helpers module, since this time there are multiple files and their content sent, so things work differently. We loop over all the files that are received and for each of these files we find their filename and extension. Then we create directories to save these files in and then save the content of the file with the corresponding filename and extension. After the file has been saved, we append it to a list and finally return the entire list so that we can get a list of all files.

if multiple:
        files_uploaded = []
        for file in files:
            extension = file.filename.split('.')[1]
            filename = get_file_name() + '.' + extension
            filedir = current_app.config.get('BASE_DIR') + '/static/uploads/'
            if not os.path.isdir(filedir):
                os.makedirs(filedir)
            file_path = filedir + filename
            file.save(file_path)
            files_uploaded.append(UploadedFile(file_path, filename))


The
upload() function then finally returns us the urls for the files after saving them.

API Response

The file upload endpoint either returns a single url or a list of urls depending on whether a single file was uploaded or multiple files were uploaded. The url for the file depends on the storage system that has been used. After the url or list of urls is received, we jsonify the entire response so that we can send a proper JSON response that can be parsed properly in the frontend and used for saving corresponding information to the database using the other API services.

A typical single file upload response looks like this:

{
     "url": "https://xyz.storage.com/asd/fgh/hjk/12332233.docx"
 }

Multiple file upload response looks like this:

{
     "url": [
         "https://xyz.storage.com/asd/fgh/hjk/12332233.docx",
         "https://xyz.storage.com/asd/fgh/hjk/66777777.ppt"
     ]
 }

You can find the related documentations and example payloads on how to use this endpoint to upload files here: http://open-event-api.herokuapp.com/#upload-file-upload.

 

Reference:

Continue ReadingUploading Files via APIs in the Open Event Server

How User Event Roles relationship is handled in Open Event Server

Users and Events are the most important part of FOSSASIA‘s Open Event Server. Through the advent and upgradation of the project, the way of implementing user event roles has gone through a lot many changes. When the open event organizer server was first decoupled to serve as an API server, the user event roles like all other models was decided to be served as a separate API to provide a data layer above the database for making changes in the entries. Whenever a new role invite was accepted, a POST request was made to the User Events Roles table to insert the new entry. Whenever there was a change in the role of an user for a particular event, a PATCH request was made. Permissions were made such that a user could insert only his/her user id and not someone else’s entry.

def before_create_object(self, data, view_kwargs):
        """
        method to create object before post
        :param data:
        :param view_kwargs:
        :return:
        """
        if view_kwargs.get('event_id'):
            event = safe_query(self, Event, 'id', view_kwargs['event_id'], 'event_id')
            data['event_id'] = event.id

        elif view_kwargs.get('event_identifier'):
            event = safe_query(self, Event, 'identifier', view_kwargs['event_identifier'], 'event_identifier')
            data['event_id'] = event.id
        email = safe_query(self, User, 'id', data['user'], 'user_id').email
        invite = self.session.query(RoleInvite).filter_by(email=email).filter_by(role_id=data['role'])\
                .filter_by(event_id=data['event_id']).one_or_none()
        if not invite:
            raise ObjectNotFound({'parameter': 'invite'}, "Object: not found")

    def after_create_object(self, obj, data, view_kwargs):
        """
        method to create object after post
        :param data:
        :param view_kwargs:
        :return:
        """
        email = safe_query(self, User, 'id', data['user'], 'user_id').email
        invite = self.session.query(RoleInvite).filter_by(email=email).filter_by(role_id=data['role'])\
                .filter_by(event_id=data['event_id']).one_or_none()
        if invite:
            invite.status = "accepted"
            save_to_db(invite)
        else:
            raise ObjectNotFound({'parameter': 'invite'}, "Object: not found")


Initially what we did was when a POST request was sent to the User Event Roles API endpoint, we would first check whether a role invite from the organizer exists for that particular combination of user, event and role. If it existed, only then we would make an entry to the database. Else we would raise an “Object: not found” error. After the entry was made in the database, we would update the role_invites table to change the status for the role_invite.

Later it was decided that we need not make a separate API endpoint. Since API endpoints are all user accessible and may cause some problem with permissions, it was decided that the user event roles would be handled entirely through the model instead of a separate API. Also, the workflow wasn’t very clear for an user. So we decided on a workflow where the role_invites table is first updated with the particular status and after the update has been made, we make an entry to the user_event_roles table with the data that we get from the role_invites table.

When a role invite is accepted, sqlalchemy add() and commit() is used to insert a new entry into the table. When a role is changed for a particular user, we make a query, update the values and save it back into the table. So the entire process is handled in the data layer level rather than the API level.

The code implementation is as follows:

def before_update_object(self, role_invite, data, view_kwargs):
        """
        Method to edit object
        :param role_invite:
        :param data:
        :param view_kwargs:
        :return:
        """
        user = User.query.filter_by(email=role_invite.email).first()
        if user:
            if not has_access('is_user_itself', id=user.id):
                raise UnprocessableEntity({'source': ''}, "Only users can edit their own status")
        if not user and not has_access('is_organizer', event_id=role_invite.event_id):
            raise UnprocessableEntity({'source': ''}, "User not registered")
        if not has_access('is_organizer', event_id=role_invite.event_id) and (len(data.keys())>1 or 'status' not in data):
            raise UnprocessableEntity({'source': ''}, "You can only change your status")

    def after_update_object(self, role_invite, data, view_kwargs):
        user = User.query.filter_by(email=role_invite.email).first()
        if 'status' in data and data['status'] == 'accepted':
            role = Role.query.filter_by(name=role_invite.role_name).first()
            event = Event.query.filter_by(id=role_invite.event_id).first()
            uer = UsersEventsRoles.query.filter_by(user=user).filter_by(event=event).filter_by(role=role).first()
            if not uer:
                uer = UsersEventsRoles(user, event, role)
                save_to_db(uer, 'Role Invite accepted')


In the above code, there are two main functions –
before_update_object which gets executed before the entry in the role_invites table is updated, and after_update_object which gets executed after.

In the before_update_object, we verify that the user is accepting or rejecting his own role invite and not someone else’s role invite. Also, we ensure that the user is allowed to only update the status of the role invite and not any other sensitive data like the role_name or email. If the user tried to edit any other field except status, then an error is shown to him/her. However if the user has organizer access, then he/she can edit the other fields of the role_invites table as well. The has_access() helper permission function helps us ensure the permission checks.

In the after_update_object we make the entry to the user event roles table. In the after_update_object from the role_invite parameter we can get the exact values of the newly updated row in the table. We use the data of this role invite to find the user, event and role associated with this role. Then we create a UsersEventsRoles object with user, event and role as parameters for the constructor. Then we use save_to_db helper function to save the new entry to the database. The save_to_db function uses the session.add() and session.commit() functions of flask-sqlalchemy to add the new entry directly to the database.

Thus, we maintain the flow of the user event roles relationship. All the database entries and operation related to users-events-roles table remains encapsulated from the client user so that they can use the various API features without thinking about the complications of the implementations.

 

Reference:

Continue ReadingHow User Event Roles relationship is handled in Open Event Server

Testing Errors and Exceptions Using Unittest in Open Event Server

Like all other helper functions in FOSSASIA‘s Open Event Server, we also need to test the exception and error helper functions and classes. The error helper classes are mainly used to create error handler responses for known errors. For example we know error 403 is Access Forbidden, but we want to send a proper source message along with a proper error message to help identify and handle the error, hence we use the error classes. To ensure that future commits do not mismatch the error, we implemented the unit tests for errors.

There are mainly two kind of error classes, one are HTTP status errors and the other are the exceptions. Depending on the type of error we get in the try-except block for a particular API, we raise that particular exception or error.

Unit Test for Exception

Exceptions are written in this form:

@validates_schema
    def validate_quantity(self, data):
        if 'max_order' in data and 'min_order' in data:
            if data['max_order'] < data['min_order']:
                raise UnprocessableEntity({'pointer': '/data/attributes/max-order'},
                                          "max-order should be greater than min-order")

 

This error is raised wherever the data that is sent as POST or PATCH is unprocessable. For example, this is how we raise this error:

raise UnprocessableEntity({'pointer': '/data/attributes/min-quantity'},

           "min-quantity should be less than max-quantity")

This exception is raised due to error in validation of data where maximum quantity should be more than minimum quantity.

To test that the above line indeed raises an exception of UnprocessableEntity with status 422, we use the assertRaises() function. Following is the code:

 def test_exceptions(self):
        # Unprocessable Entity Exception
        with self.assertRaises(UnprocessableEntity):
            raise UnprocessableEntity({'pointer': '/data/attributes/min-quantity'},
                                      "min-quantity should be less than max-quantity")


In the above code,
with self.assertRaises() creates a context of exception type, so that when the next line raises an exception, it asserts that the exception that it was expecting is same as the exception raised and hence ensures that the correct exception is being raised

Unit Test for Error

In error helper classes, what we do is, for known HTTP status codes we return a response that is user readable and understandable. So this is how we raise an error:

ForbiddenError({'source': ''}, 'Super admin access is required')

This is basically the 403: Access Denied error. But with the “Super admin access is required” message it becomes far more clear. However we need to ensure that status code returned when this error message is shown still stays 403 and isn’t modified in future unwantedly.

Here, errors and exceptions work a little different. When we declare a custom error class, we don’t really raise that error. Instead we show that error as a response. So we can’t use the assertRaises() function. However what we can do is we can compare the status code and ensure that the error raised is the same as the expected one. So we do this:

def test_errors(self):
        with app.test_request_context():
            # Forbidden Error
            forbidden_error = ForbiddenError({'source': ''}, 'Super admin access is required')
            self.assertEqual(forbidden_error.status, 403)

            # Not Found Error
            not_found_error = NotFoundError({'source': ''}, 'Object not found.')
            self.assertEqual(not_found_error.status, 404)


Here we firstly create an object of the error class
ForbiddenError with a sample source and message. We then assert that the status attribute of this object is 403 which ensures that this error is of the Access Denied type using the assertEqual() function, which is what was expected.
The above helps us maintain that no one in future unknowingly or by mistake changes the error messages and status code so as to maintain the HTTP status codes in the response.


Resources:
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Open Event Server: Testing Image Resize Using PIL and Unittest

FOSSASIA‘s Open Event Server project uses a certain set of functions in order to resize image from its original, example to thumbnail, icon or larger image. How do we test this resizing of images functions in Open Event Server project? To test image dimensions resizing functionality, we need to verify that the the resized image dimensions is same as the dimensions provided for resize.  For example, in this function, we provide the url for the image that we received and it creates a resized image and saves the resized version.

def create_save_resized_image(image_file, basewidth, maintain_aspect, height_size, upload_path,
                              ext='jpg', remove_after_upload=False, resize=True):
    """
    Create and Save the resized version of the background image
    :param resize:
    :param upload_path:
    :param ext:
    :param remove_after_upload:
    :param height_size:
    :param maintain_aspect:
    :param basewidth:
    :param image_file:
    :return:
    """
    filename = '{filename}.{ext}'.format(filename=get_file_name(), ext=ext)
    image_file = cStringIO.StringIO(urllib.urlopen(image_file).read())
    im = Image.open(image_file)

    # Convert to jpeg for lower file size.
    if im.format is not 'JPEG':
        img = im.convert('RGB')
    else:
        img = im

    if resize:
        if maintain_aspect:
            width_percent = (basewidth / float(img.size[0]))
            height_size = int((float(img.size[1]) * float(width_percent)))

        img = img.resize((basewidth, height_size), PIL.Image.ANTIALIAS)

    temp_file_relative_path = 'static/media/temp/' + generate_hash(str(image_file)) + get_file_name() + '.jpg'
    temp_file_path = app.config['BASE_DIR'] + '/' + temp_file_relative_path
    dir_path = temp_file_path.rsplit('/', 1)[0]

    # create dirs if not present
    if not os.path.isdir(dir_path):
        os.makedirs(dir_path)

    img.save(temp_file_path)
    upfile = UploadedFile(file_path=temp_file_path, filename=filename)

    if remove_after_upload:
        os.remove(image_file)

    uploaded_url = upload(upfile, upload_path)
    os.remove(temp_file_path)

    return uploaded_url


In this function, we send the
image url, the width and height to be resized to, and the aspect ratio as either True or False along with the folder to be saved. For this blog, we are gonna assume aspect ratio is False which means that we don’t maintain the aspect ratio while resizing. So, given the above mentioned as parameter, we get the url for the resized image that is saved.
To test whether it has been resized to correct dimensions, we use Pillow or as it is popularly know, PIL. So we write a separate function named getsizes() within which get the image file as a parameter. Then using the Image module of PIL, we open the file as a JpegImageFile object. The JpegImageFile object has an attribute size which returns (width, height). So from this function, we return the size attribute. Following is the code:

def getsizes(self, file):
        # get file size *and* image size (None if not known)
        im = Image.open(file)
        return im.size


As we have this function, it’s time to look into the unit testing function. So in unit testing we set dummy width and height that we want to resize to, set aspect ratio as false as discussed above. This helps us to test that both width and height are properly resized. We are using a creative commons licensed image for resizing. This is the code:

def test_create_save_resized_image(self):
        with app.test_request_context():
            image_url_test = 'https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2014/09/08/17/08/hot-air-balloons-439331_960_720.jpg'
            width = 500
            height = 200
            aspect_ratio = False
            upload_path = 'test'
            resized_image_url = create_save_resized_image(image_url_test, width, aspect_ratio, height, upload_path, ext='png')
            resized_image_file = app.config.get('BASE_DIR') + resized_image_url.split('/localhost')[1]
            resized_width, resized_height = self.getsizes(resized_image_file)


In the above code from
create_save_resized_image, we receive the url for the resized image. Since we have written all the unittests for local settings, we get a url with localhost as the server set. However, we don’t have the server running so we can’t acces the image through the url. So we build the absolute path to the image file from the url and store it in resized_image_file. Then we find the sizes of the image using the getsizes function that we have already written. This  gives us the width and height of the newly resized image. We make an assertion now to check whether the width that we wanted to resize to is equal to the actual width of the resized image. We make the same check with height as well. If both match, then the resizing function had worked perfectly. Here is the complete code:

def test_create_save_resized_image(self):
        with app.test_request_context():
            image_url_test = 'https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2014/09/08/17/08/hot-air-balloons-439331_960_720.jpg'
            width = 500
            height = 200
            aspect_ratio = False
            upload_path = 'test'
            resized_image_url = create_save_resized_image(image_url_test, width, aspect_ratio, height, upload_path, ext='png')
            resized_image_file = app.config.get('BASE_DIR') + resized_image_url.split('/localhost')[1]
            resized_width, resized_height = self.getsizes(resized_image_file)
            self.assertTrue(os.path.exists(resized_image_file))
            self.assertEqual(resized_width, width)
            self.assertEqual(resized_height, height)


In open event orga server, we use this resize function to basically create 3 resized images in various modules, such as events, users,etc. The 3 sizes are names – Large, Thumbnail and Icon. Depending on the one more suitable we use it avoiding the need to load a very big image for a very small div. The exact width and height for these 3 sizes can be changed from the admin settings of the project. We use the same technique as mentioned above. We run a loop to check the sizes for all these. Here is the code:

def test_create_save_image_sizes(self):
        with app.test_request_context():
            image_url_test = 'https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2014/09/08/17/08/hot-air-balloons-439331_960_720.jpg'
            image_sizes_type = "event"
            width_large = 1300
            width_thumbnail = 500
            width_icon = 75
            image_sizes = create_save_image_sizes(image_url_test, image_sizes_type)

            resized_image_url = image_sizes['original_image_url']
            resized_image_url_large = image_sizes['large_image_url']
            resized_image_url_thumbnail = image_sizes['thumbnail_image_url']
            resized_image_url_icon = image_sizes['icon_image_url']

            resized_image_file = app.config.get('BASE_DIR') + resized_image_url.split('/localhost')[1]
            resized_image_file_large = app.config.get('BASE_DIR') + resized_image_url_large.split('/localhost')[1]
            resized_image_file_thumbnail = app.config.get('BASE_DIR') + resized_image_url_thumbnail.split('/localhost')[1]
            resized_image_file_icon = app.config.get('BASE_DIR') + resized_image_url_icon.split('/localhost')[1]

            resized_width_large, _ = self.getsizes(resized_image_file_large)
            resized_width_thumbnail, _ = self.getsizes(resized_image_file_thumbnail)
            resized_width_icon, _ = self.getsizes(resized_image_file_icon)

            self.assertTrue(os.path.exists(resized_image_file))
            self.assertEqual(resized_width_large, width_large)
            self.assertEqual(resized_width_thumbnail, width_thumbnail)
            self.assertEqual(resized_width_icon, width_icon)

Resources:
Continue ReadingOpen Event Server: Testing Image Resize Using PIL and Unittest

Creating Unit Tests for File Upload Functions in Open Event Server with Python Unittest Library

In FOSSASIA‘s Open Event Server, we use the Python unittest library for unit testing various modules of the API code. Unittest library provides us with various assertion functions to assert between the actual and the expected values returned by a function or a module. In normal modules, we simply use these assertions to compare the result since the parameters mostly take as input normal data types. However one very important area for unittesting is File Uploading. We cannot really send a particular file or any such payload to the function to unittest it properly, since it expects a request.files kind of data which is obtained only when file is uploaded or sent as a request to an endpoint. For example in this function:

def uploaded_file(files, multiple=False):
    if multiple:
        files_uploaded = []
        for file in files:
            extension = file.filename.split('.')[1]
            filename = get_file_name() + '.' + extension
            filedir = current_app.config.get('BASE_DIR') + '/static/uploads/'
            if not os.path.isdir(filedir):
                os.makedirs(filedir)
            file_path = filedir + filename
            file.save(file_path)
            files_uploaded.append(UploadedFile(file_path, filename))

    else:
        extension = files.filename.split('.')[1]
        filename = get_file_name() + '.' + extension
        filedir = current_app.config.get('BASE_DIR') + '/static/uploads/'
        if not os.path.isdir(filedir):
            os.makedirs(filedir)
        file_path = filedir + filename
        files.save(file_path)
        files_uploaded = UploadedFile(file_path, filename)

    return files_uploaded


So, we need to create a mock uploading system to replicate this check. So inside the unittesting function we create an api route for this particular scope to accept a file as a request. Following is the code:

@app.route("/test_upload", methods=['POST'])
        def upload():
            files = request.files['file']
            file_uploaded = uploaded_file(files=files)
            return jsonify(
                {'path': file_uploaded.file_path,
                 'name': file_uploaded.filename})


In the above code, it creates an app route with endpoint test_upload. It accepts a request.files. Then it sends this object to the
uploaded_file function (the function to be unittested), gets the result of the function, and returns the result in a json format.
With this we have the endpoint to mock a file upload ready. Next we need to send a request with file object. We cannot send a normal data which would then be treated as a normal request.form. But we want to receive it in request.files. So we create 2 different classes inheriting other classes.

def test_upload_single_file(self):

        class FileObj(StringIO):

            def close(self):
                pass

        class MyRequest(Request):
            def _get_file_stream(*args, **kwargs):
                return FileObj()

        app.request_class = MyRequest


MyRequest
class inherits the Request class of Flask framework. We define the file stream of the Request class as the FileObj. Then, we set the request_class attribute of the Flask app to this new MyRequest class.
After we have it all setup, we need to send the request and see if the uploaded file is being saved properly or not. For this purpose we take help of StringIO library. StringIO creates a file-like class which can be then used to replicate a file uploading system. So we send the data as {‘file’: (StringIO(‘1,2,3,4’), ‘test_file.csv’)}. We send this as data to the /test_upload endpoint that we have created previously. As a result, the endpoint receives the function, saves the file, and returns the filename and file_path for the stored file.

 with app.test_request_context():
            client = app.test_client()
            resp = client.post('/test_upload', data = {'file': (StringIO('1,2,3,4'), 'test_file.csv')})
            data = json.loads(resp.data)
            file_path = data['path']
            filename = data['name']
            actual_file_path = app.config.get('BASE_DIR') + '/static/uploads/' + filename
            self.assertEqual(file_path, actual_file_path)
            self.assertTrue(os.path.exists(file_path))


After this is done, we need to check if the file_path that we receive is the expected file path that we should get. Secondly, we also check whether the file was really created or is this just some dummy data sent. We get the expected path by this:

actual_file_path = app.config.get('BASE_DIR') + '/static/uploads/' + filename.

Then we assert that actual_file_path is same as the resulting path we received using the assertEqual. Thirdly, we use assertTrue to ensure that there is a file in that path. That is,

self.assertTrue(os.path.exists(file_path))

Which gives a True if file exists or False if not.

So that basically sums up the unittesting.
1) If the file is saved in the correct path, and
2) The file actually exist
The the unittest passes only if both is True and is thus successful. Else we get either an error or a failure.

Following is the entire code snippet for this unit testing function:

def test_upload_single_file(self):

        class FileObj(StringIO):

            def close(self):
                pass

        class MyRequest(Request):
            def _get_file_stream(*args, **kwargs):
                return FileObj()

        app.request_class = MyRequest

        @app.route("/test_upload", methods=['POST'])
        def upload():
            files = request.files['file']
            file_uploaded = uploaded_file(files=files)
            return jsonify(
                {'path': file_uploaded.file_path,
                 'name': file_uploaded.filename})

        with app.test_request_context():
            client = app.test_client()
            resp = client.post('/test_upload', data = {'file': (StringIO('1,2,3,4'), 'test_file.csv')})
            data = json.loads(resp.data)
            file_path = data['path']
            filename = data['name']
            actual_file_path = app.config.get('BASE_DIR') + '/static/uploads/' + filename
            self.assertEqual(file_path, actual_file_path)
            self.assertTrue(os.path.exists(file_path))

Resources:
Continue ReadingCreating Unit Tests for File Upload Functions in Open Event Server with Python Unittest Library

Rendering Open Event Server’s API-Blueprint document

After writing the FOSSASIA‘s Open Event Server project API- Blueprint Document manually, we wanted to know how we could render the document, how to check it in an HTML-client friendly format and how to make it change the look as we go. In order to do that, we found two rendering ways.

They are:

1) The apiary editor:

This editor helps us to render API blueprints and print them in user readable API documented format. When we create the API blueprint manually, we always follow the pattern write an api blueprint i.e the name and metadata, then followed by resource groups and actions, which was already discussed in the last blog. In order to use the apiary editor, we start off by creating our first project. Initially during the our first use of this editor, we will get a default “polls and vote” example api project. This is a template we can use as guide. The pole/vote api looks something like this in the editor mode:

 

Apiary has a facility to test an API, document an API, inspect an API or simply edit an API. We first start off by creating a project “open-event-api”. Next, in the editor mode of the apiary, we add the contents of our api-blueprint documents.
Here is an example of how USERS API is rendered. If we get our request and response correctly, on clicking List All Users we will get a good 200 response like this in the editor:

However, if we tend to go off format with the api-blueprint, we get an invalid error:

The final rendering and how the API result can be seen in the document mode with the respective API’s request and response.
The document mode request and response look like this:

This rendered doc can be viewed publicly with the link got in the document mode. Similarly, we test it out in the editor for the rest of the ap. This is a simple way to render your api blueprint.

2)  The aglio renderer:

Since API blueprint is presented in the form of .apib format, the con side of it is it is not easily viewable by viewers. Even though we use apiary, view the rendered docs along with getting a shareable link, we would surely like the docs for our API server to be hosted in our server as well. So, we use Aglio exactly to do that .

It is an API Blueprint renderer which supports multiple themes. It converts the apib file into user readable formats such as pdf, html, etc. Here since we want to host it as a webpage, we render it in the form of .html.  It outputs static HTML of the result and can be served by any web host. Since API Blueprint is a Markdown-based document format, this lets us write API descriptions and documentation in a simple and straightforward way.
An example of how aglio rendered document in a three column format looks like:

The best thing about Aglio is not only does it support a lot many theme and templates, but it also allows you to provide your own custom theme and template to render the html file from the api blueprint.

How to use aglio renderer:

  • We first follow up with installation:
npm install -g aglio
  • After installation, we go to the folder the .apib file is stored and generate the HTML. There are 5 built in themes available with two column and three column layout. They are:
# Default theme
aglio -i input.apib -o output.html

-> This command takes as input the input.apib file as API Blueprint and creates a rendered output file named output.html.

 

# Use three-column layout
aglio -i input.apib --theme-template triple -o output.html

-> This command takes as input the input.apib file as API Blueprint and creates a rendered output file named output.html. However it uses the theme-template flag. The theme-template flag is used to define whether the layout of the rendered html is two column or three column. In this command, it is set as triple which means three column.

# Built-in color scheme
aglio --theme-variables slate -i input.apib -o output.html

-> Aglio has different color schemes that you can use while rendering the docs html file. Some of them are Olio, Streak, Slate, etc.

# Customize a built-in style
aglio --theme-style default --theme-style ./my-style.less -i input.apib -o output.html

-> Suppose you want to provide a syntactical style sheet such as SASS, LESS, etc. so as to define your own styling. You can do that as given in the above example. The my-style.less is a user defined syntactical stylesheet. This is then used to provide styling for the output file rendered.

# Custom layout template
aglio --theme-template /path/to/template.jade -i input.apib -o output.html

-> You can write your own custom layout template in a template.jade file and use that for generating the output.html instead of two or three column layout.

We run the build-in color scheme: aglio –theme-variables slate -i api_blueprint.apib -o output.html to generate our Open Event Server api document which we have something like this:

You can visit the live version of FOSSASIA‘s Open Event Server API Document right here: https://api.eventyay.com/

Continue ReadingRendering Open Event Server’s API-Blueprint document