Welcome to Pytition’s documentation!

Installation

Configuration

A configuration example is provided in pytition/settings/config_example.py. You should copy and edit it to configure Pytition.

Mandatory settings

You must set the following variables:

ALLOWED_HOSTS = ['127.0.0.1', 'localhost', '[::1]']
Enter the hostname(s) (aka VirtualHost(s)) Django should accept.
For instance mydomain.tld or petition.mydomain.tld

See also

Details on how to set this up are available in Django documentation: ALLOWED_HOSTS

Example:

ALLOWED_HOSTS = ['www.mysuperpetition.org', 'mysuperpetition.org']
DATABASES = {}
Enter a database setting.
This will tell Django what database engine you want to use (supported ones are listed there: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/2.2/ref/settings/#std:setting-DATABASE-ENGINE)
It will also give parameters like user/password credentials, server host/port etc.

See also

Details on how to set this up are available in Django documentation: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/2.2/ref/settings/#std:setting-DATABASES

In the following example, credentials are in my.cnf file:

DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.mysql',
        'OPTIONS': {
            'read_default_file': '/home/pytition/my.cnf',
            'init_command': "SET sql_mode='STRICT_TRANS_TABLES'",
        },
    }
}
SECRET_KEY = ''
Enter a random, unique and private secret key.
Pytition won’t start without it.
Never share it, don’t commit in git.
See https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/2.2/ref/settings/#std:setting-SECRET_KEY for more details from Django documentation
To generate it, you can use the following command from your virtualenv with Django installed:
$ python3 -c "from django.core.management.utils import get_random_secret_key as g; print(g())"

Example:

SECRET_KEY = 'my secret key here'
STATIC_ROOT = None
Enter the file system path to the directory that will be used to serve your static files.
This must be an initially empty directory.
You must also configure a web server (apache, nginx or other) to serve
the content of this directory according to your STATIC_URL setting
which default is '/static/' in the example config.

For instance you can have this kind of setting:

STATIC_ROOT = '/home/pytition/www/static'
STATIC_URL = '/static/'

And then in your apache config:

Alias /static /home/pytition/www/static

Or in your nginx config:

location /static {
    alias /home/pytition/www/static;
}

See also

https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/2.2/ref/settings/#std:setting-STATIC_ROOT for more details from Django Documentation

STATIC_URL = '/static/'
Enter the prefix that will be used for the URL to refer to static files.
It must end with a forward slash ‘/’.
You must also configure a web server (apache, nginx or other) to serve
the content of the directory configured as STATIC_ROOT according to this setting
It defaults to '/static/' in the example config.

For instance you can have this kind of setting:

STATIC_ROOT = '/home/pytition/www/static'
STATIC_URL = '/static/'

And then in your apache config:

Alias /static /home/pytition/www/static

Or in your nginx config:

location /static {
    alias /home/pytition/www/static;
}

See also

https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/2.2/ref/settings/#std:setting-STATIC_URL for more details from Django Documentation

Not mandatory but important settings

You are highly encouraged to set the following variables in a production environment:

Pytition specific settings

USE_MAIL_QUEUE = False
Set it to True if you want email sending to retry upon failure.
Email transmition naturally have retries if the first SMTP server accepts it
If your SMTP server refuses to handle the email (anti-flood throttle?) then it
is up to you to retry, and this is what the mail queue does for you.
This is especially needed if you don’t own the first-hop SMTP server
and cannot configure it to always accept your emails regardless of the sending
frequency.
It is HIGHLY recommended to set this to True.
If you chose to use the mail queue, you must also either

  • set a cron job (automatic task execution), or

  • serve the Django app through uwsgi (recommended setup)

Warning

The first time you switch this setting from False to True, you must run the DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=pytition.settings.config python3 pytition/manage.py migrate command again. Beware to run it while being in your virtualenv.

ALLOW_REGISTER = True
Whether you want to allow anyone to create an account and host petitions
on your Pytition instance.
Set it to False for a private instance.
Set it to True for a public instance.

Django settings

The following settings are important to set so that the email sent by Pytition are less likely to be considered as spam/junk. You should configure a real SMTP email account and not just rely on “fake” email address from local sendmail:

Other optional settings

Those are things you can configure to customize your Pytition instance:

SITE_NAME = 'Pytition'
The name of your Pytition instance.
FOOTER_TEMPLATE = None
Leave it set to None for no footer.
This should contain the relative path to your footer template.
That would be the location for any “legal mention” / “GDPR” / “TOS” link.

Example:

FOOTER_TEMPLATE = 'layouts/footer.html.example'

Indices and tables