Team Groove

Bringing democracy to shared music playlists

Vision

Allow a group of people to vote on songs in a shared playlist, thereby affecting the frequency that the songs are played.

Aims

1. Learn something about Python coding
2. Learn something about Scrum methodology
3. Have fun and teach each other what we've learnt
4. Produce code we can can be proud of and include in our portfolios
5. Allow everyone, regardless of ability or commitment, to contribute

Please view the project Wiki pages in GitHub for details of decisions, guides and notes.

Team

This project is being run as part of the PyLAB (Python Learning for Advanced Beginners) workshops, hosted by Women's Tech Hub ~ Bristol in association with Bristol Code Hub. We hold fortnightly MeetUps as part of Workshop Wednesdays, so if you'd like to join please sign up. If you'd like to chat with us, please join the Bristol Code Hub Slack and introduce yourself.

Getting Started

If this is the first time you've checked out a project from GitHub, run a Python project using Poetry or Django or are having trouble getting anything running, please read through these steps. If you're still not having any joy, please get in touch with the team.

1. System requirements

Team Groove runs using Python and is intended to be OS agnostic. You should be able to develop Team Groove in Windows, OS X or Linux. To run Team Groove locally, for testing and developing, you'll need:

1. git or a client like GitHub Desktop or GitKraken for source control
2. Python 3.6 or greater as Team Groove is written in Python
3. Poetry as we're using this as our tool to manage Python dependencies and virtual environments.

If you want to make changes to the code, you'll also need a text editor or interactive development environment (IDE). Members of the team use the IDEs listed below, so we can offer help with these if you encounter problems getting started:

• PyCharm
• Visual Studio Code
• Sublime Text

2. Checkout code from GitHub

The Team Groove project code can be found here. To check the code out locally, you'll need access to git. If you're using git on the command-line the command to clone Team Groove using SSH is:

> git clone git@github.com:CodeHubOrg/TeamGroove.git

To clone Team Groove using HTTPS, use:

> git clone https://github.com/CodeHubOrg/TeamGroove.git

3. Install package dependencies

If you don't have Poetry installed, please follow the instructions on the Poetry site. When you have Poetry installed, you can run the command below to install the modules required for Team Groove.

poetry install

This command creates a virtual environment and installs the modules used to run Team Groove, including:

• Django - the web framework
• Spotipy - library for interacting with the Spotify Web API. This will also install modules we're using for developing Team Groove, but are not required for running the application.
• Black - an "uncomprimising" Python code formatter to keep our code style consistent.
• Pylint - a static code analysis tool for refactoring and catching errors.

4. Set up local environment variables

To be able to start Team Groove running, you'll need a set up some environment variables. Copy the .env.example file to a new file in the same directory called.env and open it in your preferred editor. You'll see there are some fields that need populating.

But first, as we're going to be running several commands, let's switch to the newly created virtual environment by running this command on the command line:

> poetry shell

If you've successfully switched to the virtual environment, your command-line prompt should now include the name of the virtual environment.

To generate a new SECRET_KEY for Django you can now fire up the Python REPL.

> poetry run python

You should see something like this as the Python REPL starts:

Python 3.8.5 (default, Jan 27 2021, 15:41:15) 
[GCC 9.3.0] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>

First, import the function from the Django module:

>>> from django.core.management import utils

If that works without any issues, you can then output a new key:

>>> print(utils.get_random_secret_key())

When you've finished, you can exit the REPL with the function exit().

>>> exit()

You can copy and paste the string generated into your .env file as the value for the SECRET_KEY key.

If you wish to Team Groove with Spotify you will need to set up a developer account with Spotify so you can generate a API key and secret. You can log in or create a new account here.

5. Apply changes to the local database

Django handles creating and updating the database schema, but before you can run Team Groove, you will need to apply any outstanding changes to your local database. If you're already running a shell in the virtual environment then you can use this command:

python manage.py migrate

If you're not already running a shell in the virtual environment you can prefix the command above with poetry run:

poetry run python manage.py migrate

This creates a database if necessary and then applies the current schema.

6. Run Team Groove locally

Team Groove uses Django which comes complete with a simple web server. This means you can try running Team Groove direct from command-line by running the command below from the project directory of Team Groove. If you're already running a shell in the virtual environment then just use this command:

> python manage.py runserver

If you're not already running a shell in the virtual environment you can run this command instead:

> poetry run python manage.py runserver

This starts up the bundled Django web server so you should be able to see the site running.