FragDenStaat.de

FragDenStaat.de is the German instance of Froide – a freedom of information portal software.

Development environment

FragDenStaat.de is a Django app with a PostgreSQL+PostGIS database and elasticsearch search service. There is a production deployment ansible configuration for details.. If you want an easy start, please use the below instructions with Docker (note that this is for convenience and that the actual deployment does not use Docker at the moment).

If you do not want to use Docker, you can install this like any Django project with dependencies and services.

Setup dev environment

FragDenStaat.de is a Django project that uses the core froide project and other froide Django apps as plugins. These froide and related apps are installed from repositories and it makes sense to set them up on your dev machine.

You need to have installed:

• Python 3.12+
• uv
• pnpm 9.x & npm
• GDAL for Django's GeoDjango
• freetype and imagemagick
• postgresql bindings
• poppler
• qpdf
• ocrmypdf
• pango
• libmaxminddb
• libmagic

All of these dependencies should be installable via package managers (e.g. brew on macOS).

You also need prek for managing pre-commit hooks. Install it with uv tool install prek.

To make the setup easier the following script (devsetup.sh) creates a virtual environment, sets up and installs all repos of the Python backend and installs and links all repos of the JavaScript frontend build.

cd project-dir
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/okfde/fragdenstaat_de/main/devsetup.sh | bash

To update your setup later:

cd project-dir
bash fragdenstaat_de/devsetup.sh

Start services

You can run your own Postgres+PostGIS database and Elasticsearch service or run them with Docker.

You need Docker Desktop. Make sure Docker is running and use the following command:

docker compose -f compose-dev.yaml up

This will start Postgres and Elasticsearch and listen on port 5432 and 9200 respectively. You can adjust the port mapping in the compose-dev.yaml.

Setup database

If you need to adjust settings, you can copy the fragdenstaat_de/settings/local_settings.py.example to fragdenstaat_de/settings/local_settings.py and edit it.

To initialize the database:

# Activate virtualenv
cd fragdenstaat_de
source .venv/bin/activate
# Create database structure
python manage.py migrate --skip-checks

Load CMS fixtures into the database

To get started with some data:

# Load initial data (e.g. some CMS test fixtures)
python manage.py loaddata tests/fixtures/cms.json
# Create a superuser
python manage.py createsuperuser

Import SQL dumps

Alternatively, load a light SQL dump:

./devsetup.sh load_dump

Populate the search index after loading data

# Create and populate search index
python manage.py search_index --create
python manage.py search_index --populate

Quick start after setup

cd fragdenstaat_de
source .venv/bin/activate
# Start service in background with -d
docker compose -f compose-dev.yaml up -d
# Run front-end
pnpm run dev

python manage.py runserver

Run tests locally

Set up the test environment:

# Activate virtualenv
cd fragdenstaat_de
source .venv/bin/activate

# Install test dependencies
playwright install

# Precompile front end assets
pnpm run build

Run the tests locally:

docker compose -f compose-dev.yaml up -d
make test

Main app dependencies

The fragdenstaat_de project depends on froide, multiple froide-related apps.

flowchart LR
    fragdenstaat_de[[fragdenstaat_de]]-->froide
    fragdenstaat_de-->froideapp[froide-*]
    froideapp-->froide
    froide-->filingcabinet[[django-filingcabinet]]
    fragdenstaat_de-->cms([django-cms])

Upgrade dependencies

To upgrade froide and its related apps, run:

make dependencies

License

Froide and fragdenstaat_de are licensed under the AGPL License.