Deployment on Windows with Apache web server

The windows installer installs a Python based web server. For environments with a few concurrent users or for a trial installation this will suffice, and it is the recommended configuration.

If the number of concurrent users is higher or when more complex configurations are required on the network (such as HTTPS encryption, additional web pages to be served from the same web server, access from the internet as well as from the intranet, using external authentication instead, configure compression and caching, etc…), you can deploy frePPLe with an Apache web server.

Note that scalability of the web application on Linux is significantly better on Linux than on Windows. Environments with more than 20 concurrent users should prefer Linux.

To configure frePPLe on Windows with an Apache web server, the following steps are required:

1. Assure you have administrator rights on the machine.

2. Install frePPLe using the Windows installer, following the steps from the previous page.

3. Collect all static files

   The static files will be served by the Apache web server, and we need to collect all of these files in a separate folder. Open a command prompt in the bin folder of your frePPLe installation and run:

   frepplectl collectstatic
   

4. Install PostgreSQL database.

   The recommended version is 10.x 64-bit. It is recommended to tune the database parameters with the values found on http://pgtune.leopard.in.ua/.

5. Install Python 3.5 64-bit or higher

   The download URL is http://www.python.org/download/releases/3.5/

6. Install Psycopg2

   The Python database driver for PostgreSQLcan be downloaded from http://stickpeople.com/projects/python/win-psycopg/

   Pick the executable that matches the Python version.

7. Install PyWin32

   The Python Windows extensions can be downloaded from http://sourceforge.net/projects/pywin32/

   Select the 64-bit installer for Python 3.5.

8. Install the Python database drivers, Django and other python modules

   Since frePPle requires some patches to the standard Django package, so the source from our cloned and patched version of django will be downloaded and installed.

   In the root of your Python install you will find a “requirements.txt” file containing a list as shown below. You can always pick up the correct version from https://raw.githubusercontent.com/frepple/frepple/4.2/requirements.txt (make sure to replace 4.2 with the appropriate version number!)

   CherryPy >= 3.2.2
   CherryPy == 5.1.0
   djangorestframework == 3.6.2
   djangorestframework-bulk == 0.2.1
   djangorestframework-filters == 0.10.0
   django-admin-bootstrapped
   django-bootstrap3 == 8.2.2
   html5lib == 0.999
   jdcal == 1.0.1
   Markdown == 2.6.8
   openpyxl == 2.4.7
   lxml == 3.7.3
   PyJWT == 1.5.0
   https://github.com/frePPLe/django/tarball/frepple_4.2
   

   To install the requirements just issue a pip3 command:

   sudo pip install -r requirements.txt
   

9. Install mod_wsgi

   Mod_wsgi is python WSGI adapter module for Apache.

   The download URL is http://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/#mod_wsgi Choose the 64-bit for Python 3.5 and Apache 2.4, and copy the file to the Apache modules folder.

10. Configure the Apache web server

    Add a line to the file conf/httpd.conf:

    Include conf/extra/httpd-frepple.conf
    

    Create a file conf/extra/httpd-frepple.conf using the example we provide in the file contrib/debian/httpd/conf. Adjust the paths, review carefully, and tweak to your preferences and needs!

11. Test the setup

    Open your browser and verify the frePPLe pages display correctly.