master | develop

PPP

About

PPP is a project with the purpose of helping people convert XlsForm Excel files into more human-readable, printable formats, commonly called "paper questionnaires". Officially, PPP stands for "Pretty PDF Printer", but other formats are supported. The project consists of...

• A web application
• A command line tool

Both tools are open source and free to install. You can also use it online with no installation necessary, at http://ppp.pma2020.org.

Samples

• Source Excel file: demo.xlsx
• Converted to PDF: demo.pdf
• Converted to DOC: demo.doc
• Manually saved as DOCX from DOC: demo.docx
• Converted to HTML: demo.html

Example Screenshot

Application Internals

Application contains only one page with web form, where user can upload an ODK XlsForms file for conversion to HTML, PDF of DOC format.

UI libraries:

• Twitter Bootstrap
• Bootstrap File Input
• jQuery v2.2.4
• Notify.js

Backend libraries:

• Flask
• wkhtmltopdf

Tips

• Backend: conversion to DOC format implemented as conversion to HTML file and returning this HTML file to user with .doc extension instead of .html, as office programs understands how to render such files.
• Backend: conversion to PDF format implemented as conversion to HTML with next conversion to PDF using wkhtmltopdf external tool.
• UI: After successful uploading, form will be cleared automatically.
• UI: If something was wrong while processing the file, page will be reloaded and error message will be shown.
• UI: manually selecting/deselecting conversion options will activate "Custom" preset button.

Deployment

1. Update system and install required packages

This deployment guide is written for Ubuntu. For other Linux distributions, please refer to this handy setup guide, especially if using Linode.

apt-get update && apt-get upgrade

Note
Ubuntu may prompt you when the Grub package is updated. If prompted, select keep the local version currently installed.

apt-get install htop libfontconfig1 libxrender1 python3-pip python3-dev python3-venv nginx git vim

2. Clone project from repo

cd /opt

/opt $ git clone https://github.com/PMA-2020/ppp-web.git

3. Create virtual environment

/opt $ cd ppp-web

/opt/ppp-web $ python3 -m venv .venv

/opt/ppp-web $ source .venv/bin/activate

/opt/ppp-web $ pip install --upgrade pip

4. Dependencies

Install project dependencies

/opt/ppp-web $ pip install -r requirements.txt

Install pmix package

/opt/ppp-web $ pip install -r https://raw.githubusercontent.com/<git-suburl>/requirements.txt

Example
pip install -r https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jkpr/pmix/develop/requirements.txt

Note
You may experience a DistutilsError related to the cairocffi package. If this occurs, it is likely OK to ignore, as this is a peer dependency and not required for PPP-Web.

/opt/ppp-web $ pip install https://github.com/<git-suburl>

Examples pip install https://github.com/jkpr/pmix/archive/develop.zip pip install https://github.com/joeflack4/pmix/archive/ppp.zip

5. Required Configuration

Change Python executable path

Edit config.py
/opt/ppp-web $ cd ppp_web /opt/ppp-web/ppp_web $ vim app_instance/config.py

Set Python executable variable
PYTHON_PATH='/opt/ppp-web/.venv/bin/python3'

Set execution flag for dependency wkhtmltopdf

/opt/ppp-web/ppp_web $ chmod +x bin/wkhtmltopdf

6. Set up logging

mkdir logs/
touch access-logfile.log && touch error-logfile.log

7. Run server process

Run the app_instance in background

/opt/ppp-web/ppp_web $ gunicorn -b 0.0.0.0:8080 run:app_instance &

Open web interface at address

https://<server-ip>:8080

You're finished!

Maintenance

Upgrading PPP-Web

Log in to server & activate environment

Common Workflows > Logging in to server
Common Workflows > Activate virtual environment

There are several options from here. One option to get changes is to checkout a remote branch locally and reapply a change config.py as shown in the first part of step (5) in the Deployment section. Another option is to back up and clone a fresh copy of the repo. Another option is to stash any current changes, rebase/merge, and recover the stash. Another option is to commit any current changes and then do a rebase of the/a remote branch onto the/a local one. That's the one we'll show here.

Backup current install (optional)

This step is optional, as git in itself is a backup mechanism.

cd /opt/
mkdir _archive (if it doesn't exist)
mv ppp-web _archive/DATE

Example mv ppp-web _archive/2018-02-20

Commit local changes

Add local changes to staging
git add .

Commit local changes. If all you've done during/since deployment is change config.py, the following message should do.
git commit -m "Updated PYTHON_PATH path in config.py during deployment installation process."

Get remote changes

Add any additonal remotes if required to fetch from

git remote add trunk https://github.com/PMA-2020/ppp-web.git

Example

git remote add trunk https://github.com/PMA-2020/ppp-web.git && \
git remote add joeflack4 https://github.com/joeflack4/ppp-web.git

Fetch changes

git fetch --all

Merge in changes using rebase git rebase REMOTE/BRANCH

Example
git rebase trunk/master

Start or restart server

Common Workflows > Starting the server

Upgrading Dependencies

Log in to server & activate environment

Common Workflows > Logging in to server
Common Workflows > Activate virtual environment

Upgrade dependency

python -m pip install <url-to-dependency> --upgrade

Example python -m pip install git+https://github.com/jkpr/pmix@develop --upgrade

Restart server

Common Workflows > Restart server

Common Workflows

Logging in to server

ssh <server> and enter password when prompted.

Examples Production: root@192.155.80.11 Staging: root@172.104.31.28

Starting the server

Activate environment

Common Workflows > Activate virtual environment

Run server process

cd /opt/ppp-web/ppp_web /opt/ppp-web/ppp_web $ gunicorn -b 0.0.0.0:8080 run:app_instance &

Restarting the server

Find process ID

The server that PPP-Web uses is called "gunicorn", so...
ps -e | grep gunicorn

Kill process

kill -9 <ID>, where "" is the one found in previous step.

Start new process

Common Workflows > Starting the server

Activate virtual environment

cd /opt/ppp-web
/opt/ppp-web $ source .venv/bin/activate