# Running the discussion service ## Instruction for Mac ## Installing Mongodb If you haven't done so already: brew install mongodb Make sure that you have mongodb running. You can simply open a new terminal tab and type: mongod ## Installing elasticsearch brew install elasticsearch For debugging, it's often more convenient to have elasticsearch running in a terminal tab instead of in background. To do so, simply open a new terminal tab and then type: elasticsearch -f ## Setting up the discussion service You can retrieve the source code from the [github repository](https://github.com/edx/cs_comments_service). First go into the edx_all directory. Then type git clone https://github.com/edx/cs_comments_service.git cd cs_comments_service/ If you see a prompt asking "Do you wish to trust this .rvmrc file?", type "y" Now if you see this error "Gemset 'cs_comments_service' does not exist," run the following command to create the gemset and then use the rvm environment manually: rvm gemset create 'cs_comments_service' rvm use 1.9.3@cs_comments_service Now use the following command to install required packages: bundle install The following command creates database indexes: bundle exec rake db:init Now use the following command to generate seeds (basically some random comments in Latin): bundle exec rake db:seed It's done! Launch the app now: ruby app.rb ## Integrating with the edx platform The API key must match on both sides. It is configured here: * edx-platform: COMMENTS_SERVICE_KEY in your dev.py file (dev environment) or ENV_TOKENS (prod environment) * cs_comments_service: api_key in the application.yml file (dev environment) or ENV variable (prod environment) ## Running the delayed job worker In the discussion service, notifications are handled asynchronously using a third party gem called delayed_job. If you want to test this functionality, run the following command in a separate tab: bundle exec rake jobs:work ## From the edx-platform django app, initialize roles and permissions To fully test the discussion forum, you might want to act as a moderator or an administrator. Currently, the roles are: * moderators can manage everything in the forum, and * administrators can manage everything plus assigning and revoking moderator status of other users. First make sure that the database is up-to-date: rake resetdb If you have created users in the edx-platform django apps when the comment service was not running, you will need to one-way sync the users into the comment service back end database: ./manage.py lms sync_user_info Now initialize roles and permissions, providing a course id. See the example below. Note that you do not need to do this for Studio-created courses, as the Studio application does this for you. ./manage.py lms seed_permissions_roles "MITx/6.002x/2012_Fall" To assign yourself as a moderator, use the following command (assuming your username is "test", and the course id is "MITx/6.002x/2012_Fall"): ./manage.py lms assign_role test Moderator "MITx/6.002x/2012_Fall" To assign yourself as an administrator, use the following command ./manage.py lms assign_role test Administrator "MITx/6.002x/2012_Fall" ## Some other useful commands ### generate seeds for a specific forum The seed generating command above assumes that you have the following discussion tags somewhere in the course data: <discussion for="Welcome Video" id="video_1" discussion_category="Video"/> <discussion for="Lab 0: Using the Tools" id="lab_1" discussion_category="Lab"/> <discussion for="Lab Circuit Sandbox" id="lab_2" discussion_category="Lab"/> For example, you can insert them into overview section as following: <chapter name="Overview"> <section format="Video" name="Welcome"> <vertical> <video youtube="0.75:izygArpw-Qo,1.0:p2Q6BrNhdh8,1.25:1EeWXzPdhSA,1.50:rABDYkeK0x8"/> <discussion for="Welcome Video" id="video_1" discussion_category="Video"/> </vertical> </section> <section format="Lecture Sequence" name="System Usage Sequence"> <%include file="sections/introseq.xml"/> </section> <section format="Lab" name="Lab0: Using the tools"> <vertical> <html> See the <a href="/section/labintro"> Lab Introduction </a> or <a href="/static/handouts/schematic_tutorial.pdf">Interactive Lab Usage Handout </a> for information on how to do the lab </html> <problem name="Lab 0: Using the Tools" filename="Lab0" rerandomize="false"/> <discussion for="Lab 0: Using the Tools" id="lab_1" discussion_category="Lab"/> </vertical> </section> <section format="Lab" name="Circuit Sandbox"> <vertical> <problem name="Circuit Sandbox" filename="Lab_sandbox" rerandomize="false"/> <discussion for="Lab Circuit Sandbox" id="lab_2" discussion_category="Lab"/> </vertical> </section> </chapter> Currently, only the attribute "id" is actually used, which identifies discussion forum. In the code for the data generator, the corresponding lines are: generate_comments_for("video_1") generate_comments_for("lab_1") generate_comments_for("lab_2") We also have a command for generating comments within a forum with the specified id: bundle exec rake db:generate_comments[type_the_discussion_id_here] For instance, if you want to generate comments for a new discussion tab named "lab_3", then use the following command bundle exec rake db:generate_comments[lab_3] ### Running tests for the service bundle exec rspec Warning: the development and test environments share the same elasticsearch index. After running tests, search may not work in the development environment. You simply need to reindex: bundle exec rake db:reindex_search ### debugging the service You can use the following command to launch a console within the service environment: bundle exec rake console ### show user roles and permissions Use the following command to see the roles and permissions of a user in a given course (assuming, again, that the username is "test"): ./manage.py lms show_permissions moderator You need to make sure that the environment variables are exported. Otherwise you would need to do ./manage.py lms show_permissions moderator