Downtime Database

An application with a database that stores periods of scheduled telescope downtime for an observatory with an API to access those downtimes. Within an observatory control system, downtimes can be used to block out time for things such as maintenance activites or education use on specific telescopes.

Prerequisites

• Python>=3.8
• (Optional) PostgreSQL
• Configuration database to connect to
• (Optional) Observation Portal for Oauth2 authentication

By default, the application uses a SQLite database. This is suitable for development, but PostgreSQL is recommended when running in production.

Configuration

This project is configured using environment variables.

Variable	Description	Default
SECRET_KEY	Django Secret Key	### CHANGE ME ###
DEBUG	Django Debug mode	False
DB_ENGINE	Database Engine, set to django.db.backends.postgresql_psycopg2 to use PostgreSQL	django.db.backends.sqlite3
DB_NAME	Database Name	db.sqlite3
DB_HOST	Database Hostname, set this when using PostgreSQL	''
DB_USER	Database Username, set this when using PostgreSQL	''
DB_PASS	Database Password, set this when using PostgreSQL	''
DB_PORT	Database Port, set this when using PostgreSQL	5432
OAUTH_CLIENT_ID	OAuth authentication client id (found in observation portal admin for the app)	''
OAUTH_CLIENT_SECRET	OAuth authentication client secret (found in observation portal admin for the app)	''
OAUTH_TOKEN_URL	OAuth authentication token endpoint (observation-portal-base-url/o/token)	''
OAUTH_PROFILE_URL	Observation portal profile api endpoint (observation-portal-base-url/api/profile)	''
OAUTH_SERVER_KEY	Observation portal server secret key to authenticate calls from the server	''
CONFIGDB_URL	Configuration database base url	''
LOGO_URL	URL to a hosted logo to display in the navbar of the web frontend	''

Local Development

Poetry

Install Poetry using one of the methods described at https://python-poetry.org/docs/#installation.

For example, using pipx:

pipx install poetry

Then install the project & its dependencies:

poetry install

Set up the database

You may use the default SQLite for development, or you can set up using PostgreSQL. If using SQLite, you can skip directly to running database migrations. If using PostgreSQL, the following command uses the PostgreSQL Docker image to create a PostgreSQL database. Make sure that the options that you use to set up your database correspond with your configured database settings.

docker run --name downtime-postgres -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=postgres -e POSTGRES_DB=downtime -v/var/lib/postgresql/data -p5432:5432 -d postgres:11.1

Run database migrations to set up the tables in the database.

poetry run python manage.py migrate

Run the tests

First collect the staticfiles since some of the tests check the admin page functionality

poetry run python manage.py collectstatic

poetry run python manage.py test --settings=test_settings

Run the application

poetry run python manage.py runserver

The application should now be accessible from http://127.0.0.1:8000!

This application serves an api to read/write downtimes at /api/, and a filterable web frontend to view downtimes at /.

Managing downtime entries

Downtimes are added and deleted manually via the admin interface, or through the API via a POST to the /api/ endpoint. In both cases, you must authenticate as a valid staff/admin User via the Observation Portal to get write access. This is done with a user/pass form submission via the admin interface, or using HTTPBasicAuth with the user/pass as part of an API POST.

There is also a django management command to create downtimes:

poetry run python manage.py create_downtime help

Example API queries

A downtime entry in the database is returned in JSON and has the following format:

{
    "start": "2017-08-21T08:45:00Z",
    "end": "2017-08-21T09:45:00Z",
    "site": "coj",
    "enclosure": "clma",
    "telescope": "0m4a",
    "reason": "Maintenance"
}

Return all downtimes

GET /api/

Return the downtimes past a specific date:

GET /api/?starts_after=2017-11-27%2014:45:00

Return the downtimes before a specific date:

GET /api/?ends_before=2017-08-24%2015:15:00

Filter downtimes by reason:

GET /api/?reason=Maintenance

Filter downtimes by site, enclosure and telescope:

GET /api/?site=ogg&enclosure=clma&telescope=0m4a