Settings reference¶

In order to have the default values for the following settings available, you must start your settings.py with:

from jb_common.settings_defaults import *
from samples.settings_defaults import *

We recommend to use the settings.py in JuliaBase’s root directory as a starting point.

General JuliaBase settings¶

ADD_SAMPLES_VIEW¶

Default: "" (Empty string)

Name of the view to add samples. For example:

ADD_SAMPLES_VIEW = "institute:add_samples"

This view function must have exactly one parameter, namely the request instance.

CACHE_ROOT¶

Default: "/tmp/juliabase_cache"

The path where dispensable (in the sense of re-creatable) files are stored. JuliaBase mostly uses this directory to store images, e.g. plot files. If the path doesn’t exist when the JuliaBase service is started, it is created. The default value should be changed to e.g. "/var/cache/juliabase". Note that such a path needs to be created by you because Juliabase doesn’t have the necessary permissions. Also note that such a path needs to be writable by the webserver process JuliaBase is running on.

CRAWLER_LOGS_ROOT¶

Default: "" (Empty string)

Path to the crawlers’ log files. In this directory, the log file for a particular process class is called class_name.log. Mind the spelling: MyProcessClassName becomes my_process_class_name.log.

CRAWLER_LOGS_WHITELIST¶

Default: [] (Empty list)

List of process classes for which the crawler log is public, i.e. not restricted to users that are allowed to add new processes of that kind.

DEBUG_EMAIL_REDIRECT_USERNAME¶

Default: "" (Empty string)

Username of a user to which all outgoing email should be sent if the Django setting DEBUG=True. If this name is invalid, in particular if it is empty, no emails are sent at all in debugging mode. This prevents embarrassment caused by emails sent to other people while merely debugging your code.

HELP_LINK_PREFIX¶

Default:: "http://www.juliabase.org/"

URL prefix to be prepended to all help link given in the help_link() decorator.

INITIALS_FORMATS¶

Default:

INITIALS_FORMATS = \
    {"user": {"pattern": r"[A-Z]{2,4}|[A-Z]{2,3}\d|[A-Z]{2}\d{2}",
              "description": _("The initials start with two uppercase letters.  "
                               "They contain uppercase letters and digits only.  "
                               "Digits are at the end.")},
     "external_contact": {
              "pattern": r"[A-Z]{4}|[A-Z]{3}\d|[A-Z]{2}\d{2}",
              "description": _("The initials start with two uppercase letters.  "
                               "They contain uppercase letters and digits only.  "
                               "Digits are at the end.  "
                               "The length is exactly 4 characters.")}
     }

This maps the kind of initials to their properties. It must contain exactly the two keys "user" and "external_contact". See Initials for more information.

JAVASCRIPT_I18N_APPS¶

Default: ["django.contrib.auth", "samples", "jb_common"]

List containing all apps which contain translations that should be used in JavaScript code. The apps are named as in the Django setting INSTALLED_APPS. See the Django documentation for further information.

MERGE_CLEANUP_FUNCTION¶

Default: "" (Empty string)

Name of the view in Python’s dot notation which points to a function which is called after each sample merge. This function must take exactly two parameters, the sample that is merged and the sample that this sample is merged into. It is possible to leave this settings empty; then, nothing special is called.

NAME_PREFIX_TEMPLATES¶

Default: [] (Empty list)

List of string templates that define possible sample name prefixes. See Sample names for more information.

SAMPLE_NAME_FORMATS¶

Default:

SAMPLE_NAME_FORMATS = {"provisional": {"possible_renames": {"default"}},
                       "default":     {"pattern": r"[-A-Za-z_/0-9#()]*"}}

This setting defines which sample names are allowed in your database. It maps the names of the formats to their properties. See Sample names for more information.

THUMBNAIL_WIDTH¶

Default: 400

This number represents the width in pixels of the thumbnails of plots and images that are generated for the sample data sheet.

Settings for LDAP¶

LDAP_ACCOUNT_FILTER¶

Default: "(!(userAccountControl:1.2.840.113556.1.4.803:=2))"

LDAP filter for filtering LDAP members that are eligible for JuliaBase access. The default filter finds any member which is not inactive. The default value works well for Active Directory domain controllers.

LDAP_ADDITIONAL_ATTRIBUTES¶

Default: [] (Empty list)

JuliaBase limits the attributes it receives for every user to a certain subset, e.g. the user’s real name and their department. If your code needs additional LDAP attributes, put their names into this list. An example might be:

LDAP_ADDITIONAL_ATTRIBUTES = ["telephoneNumber", "msExchUserCulture",
                              "physicalDeliveryOfficeName"]

LDAP_ADDITIONAL_USERS¶

Default: {} (Empty dict)

Dictionary mapping user names to JuliaBase department names. This contains users that are in the LDAP directory but are not in one of the departments listed in the setting LDAP_DEPARTMENTS explained below. The use case is that some people working in the organization but not in the department(s) may still be eligible for database access. By putting them in LDAP_ADDITIONAL_USERS, they are allowed to login. They are associated with the department they are mapped to.

LDAP_DEPARTMENTS¶

Default: {} (Empty dict)

Dictionary mapping LDAP department names to JuliaBase department names. If your LDAP directory data sets contain the “department” attribute, this setting determines which department get access to JuliaBase. If this setting is empty, all LDAP members get access.

If the LDAP doesn’t contain the “department” attribute, this setting should be empty.

LDAP_GROUPS_TO_PERMISSIONS¶

Default: {} (Empty dict)

Dictionary mapping LDAP group names to sets of Django permission names. Use the Django codename of the permission, without any app label. An example might be:

LDAP_GROUPS_TO_PERMISSIONS = {
        "TG_IEF-5_teamleaders": {"view_every_sample", "adopt_samples",
                                 "edit_permissions_for_all_physical_processes",
                                 "add_externaloperator",
                                 "view_every_externaloperator",
                                 "add_topic", "change_topic"}
    }

Note that you should not change permissions in JuliaBase’s admin interface that occur in LDAP_GROUPS_TO_PERMISSIONS. They will be overwritten during the next synchronization with the LDAP directory (in particular, at next user login). Consider these permissions being managed exclusively automatically.

LDAP_LOGIN_TEMPLATE¶

Default: "{username}"

This pattern is used to bind to (a.k.a. login into) the LDAP server. JuliaBase uses this binding only to check whether the user’s credentials (login, password) are valid. {username} is replaced by the username of the user that tries to login into JuliaBase. A typical value for this setting is

LDAP_LOGIN_TEMPLATE = "{username}@mycompany.com"

LDAP_PASSWORD¶

Default: None

Login password of the functional LDAP user that is used to bind to the LDAP for retrieving data. In some LDAP configurations, anonymous binding is allowed. Then, you don’t need this setting.

LDAP_SEARCH_DN¶

Default: "" (Empty string)

The “distinguished name” (DN) which should be used as the base of the search for user details in the LDAP directory. It is typically something like:

LDAP_SEARCH_DN = "DC=ad,DC=mycompany,DC=com"

LDAP_URLS¶

Default: [] (Empty list)

List of URLs of LDAP directories. If you want to use LDAP, this must contain at least one URL. It may contain more if there are multiple redundant LDAP servers. In this case, JuliaBase will try each of them until it finds a working one. An example value may be:

LDAP_URLS = ["ldaps://dc-e01.ad.mycompany.com:636"]

Here, 636 is the port number of LDAP-over-TLS. Note that in order to use TLS, you must start the URL with ldaps://.

LDAP_USER¶

Default: None

Login name of the functional LDAP user that is used to bind to the LDAP for retrieving data. In some LDAP configurations, anonymous binding is allowed. Then, you don’t need this setting. Note that LDAP_LOGIN_TEMPLATE is applied to this name.

JB_LOGGING_PATH¶

Default: "/tmp/jb_common.log"

Path to the log file of JuliaBase. Currently, it only logs the requests with timestamps, URL, and the currently logged-in user.

Django settings with special meaning in JuliaBase¶

Note that JuliaBase does not change the meaning or the default value of Django settings.

LANGUAGES¶

This settings determines which flags to offer at the top of the screen. Since JuliaBase is available in English and German so far, a sensible value may be:

LANGUAGES = [("de", _("German")), ("en", _("English"))]

Note that the _(...) makes the language names themselves translatable. To get this working, you must import gettext_lazy into settings.py:

from django.utils.translation import gettext_lazy as _

CACHES¶

JuliaBase makes heavy use of Django’s cache framework. Thus, we recommend to configure an efficient caching backend like Redis:

CACHES = {
    "default": {
        "BACKEND": "django.core.cache.backends.redis.RedisCache",
        "LOCATION": "redis://127.0.0.1:6379",
        "TIMEOUT": 3600 * 24 * 28
        }
    }

DEBUG¶

JuliaBase behaves slightly differently if DEBUG=True. In particular, all outgoing emails are redirected to DEBUG_EMAIL_REDIRECT_USERNAME.

DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL¶

JuliaBase uses this Django setting also for its own outgoing emails.

INSTALLED_APPS¶

The minimal set of installed apps for JuliaBase is:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    "django.contrib.auth",
    "django.contrib.contenttypes",
    "django.contrib.sessions",
    "django.contrib.admin",
    "django.contrib.messages",
    "django.contrib.staticfiles",
    "institute",
    "samples",
    "jb_common"
]

Of course, you must replace j_institute by your own institute’s app. Furthermore, you may add as many apps as you like, as long as the inner order is preserved.

MIDDLEWARE¶

The following is a minimal set of middleware JuliaBase is working with:

MIDDLEWARE = [
    "django.middleware.common.CommonMiddleware",
    "django.contrib.sessions.middleware.SessionMiddleware",
    "django.contrib.messages.middleware.MessageMiddleware",
    "jb_common.middleware.MessageMiddleware",
    "django.middleware.locale.LocaleMiddleware",
    "django.contrib.auth.middleware.AuthenticationMiddleware",
    "jb_common.middleware.LocaleMiddleware",
    "samples.middleware.juliabase.ExceptionsMiddleware",
]

Note that while you may add further middleware, you must not change the inner ordering of existing middleware.

SECRET_KEY¶

Note that in the settings.py file shipped with JuliaBase, the SECRET_KEY is read from the file ~/.juliabase_secret_key. If this file doesn’t exist, it is generated. This is good for quickly gettings things running and not insecure per se, but you should be aware of this. In particular, nobody else should have access to it.

Of course, alternatively, you may set the SECRET_KEY in a completely different way.

A change of the secret key has the usual impact as for every Django deployment, plus that links to Atom feeds change (with the old ones being broken).

TEMPLATES¶

JuliaBase uses Django’s template engine.

Make sure that you add "jb_common.context_processors.default" to the list of "context processors".

DIRS¶

So that your can override JuliaBase’s templates with own templates, you should set in the template backend dictionary:

"DIRS": [os.path.abspath(os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), "../juliabase"))]

If you don’t override BASE_DIR, you can write simply

"DIRS": [BASE_DIR]

You may add further paths, but if your project layout is structured according to Organizing your source code, this one must be present. Then, you can extend Juliabase templates by beginning your template with e.g.

{% extends "samples/templates/samples/list_claims.html" %}

loaders¶

In conjunction with DIRS you must make sure that Django will look for templates first in the app directories, and then in the filesystem. With activated template caching, this looks like

"loaders": ["django.template.loaders.cached.Loader",
            ("django.template.loaders.app_directories.Loader",
             "django.template.loaders.filesystem.Loader")]

in the "OPTIONS" dictionary, and without caching, like:

"loaders": ["django.template.loaders.app_directories.Loader",
            "django.template.loaders.filesystem.Loader"]

USE_TZ¶

You should set it to True (the default for newly created Django projects). You even must do so if your database backend does not support timezone-aware datetimes by itself.

TIME_ZONE¶

If USE_TZ is set to True, you should also consider setting TIME_ZONE. See the Django documentation for details.

Settings reference¶

General JuliaBase settings¶

ADD_SAMPLES_VIEW¶

CACHE_ROOT¶

CRAWLER_LOGS_ROOT¶

CRAWLER_LOGS_WHITELIST¶

DEBUG_EMAIL_REDIRECT_USERNAME¶

HELP_LINK_PREFIX¶

INITIALS_FORMATS¶

JAVASCRIPT_I18N_APPS¶

MERGE_CLEANUP_FUNCTION¶

NAME_PREFIX_TEMPLATES¶

SAMPLE_NAME_FORMATS¶

THUMBNAIL_WIDTH¶

Settings for LDAP¶

LDAP_ACCOUNT_FILTER¶

LDAP_ADDITIONAL_ATTRIBUTES¶

LDAP_ADDITIONAL_USERS¶

LDAP_DEPARTMENTS¶

LDAP_GROUPS_TO_PERMISSIONS¶

LDAP_LOGIN_TEMPLATE¶

LDAP_PASSWORD¶

LDAP_SEARCH_DN¶

LDAP_URLS¶

LDAP_USER¶

JB_LOGGING_PATH¶

Django settings with special meaning in JuliaBase¶

LANGUAGES¶

CACHES¶

DEBUG¶

DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL¶

INSTALLED_APPS¶

LOGIN_URL¶

LOGIN_REDIRECT_URL¶

MIDDLEWARE¶

SECRET_KEY¶

TEMPLATES¶

DIRS¶

loaders¶

USE_TZ¶

TIME_ZONE¶