Installation and Deployment
=============================

To install/deploy this app follow the steps below:

 1. Clone this repository and cd to the cloned repo.

 2. Run::

      $ python manage.py syncdb
      [ enter password etc.]

 3. Add questions by editing the "doc/sample_questions.py" or any other
    file in the same format and then run the following::

      $ python manage.py load_exam doc/sample_questions.py

    Note that you can supply multiple Python files as arguments and all of
    those will be added to the database.
    
 4. First run the python server provided.  This ensures that the code is 
    executed in a safe environment.  Do this like so::
    
      $ sudo python python_server.py
      
    Put this in the background once it has started since this will not
    return back the prompt.  It is important that the server be running
    *before* students start attempting the exam.  Using sudo is
    necessary since the server is run as the user "nobody".  This runs
    on the ports configured in the settings.py file in the variable
    "SERVER_PORTS".  The "SERVER_TIMEOUT" also can be changed there.
    This is the maximum time allowed to execute the submitted code.
    Note that this will likely spawn multiple processes as "nobody"
    depending on the number of server ports specified.

 5. Now, run::
 
    $ python manage.py runserver <desired_ip>:<desired_port>
    
    For deployment use Apache or a real webserver, see below for more 
    information.

 6. Go to http://deserved_host_or_ip:desired_port/admin

 7. Login with your credentials and look at the questions and modify if
    needed.  Create a new Quiz, set the date and duration or
    activate/deactivate the quiz.

 8. Now ask users to login at:

        http://host:port/exam

    And you should be all set.
    
 9. Note that the directory "output" will contain directories, one for each
    user.  Users can potentially write output into these that can be used
    for checking later.

 10. As admin user you can visit http://host/exam/monitor  to view
     results and user data interactively.

 11. You may dump the results and user data using the results2csv and
     dump_user_data commands.

WARNING:  django is running in debug mode for this currently, CHANGE it
during deployment.  To do this, edit settings.py and set DEBUG to False.
Also look at other settings and change them suitably.

The file doc/sample_questions.py is a template that you can use for your
own questions.

Additional commands available
==============================

We provide several convenient commands for you to use:

 - load_exam : load questions and a quiz from a python file.  See
   docs/sample_questions.py

 - load_questions_xml : load questions from XML file, see
   docs/sample_questions.xml  use of this is deprecated in favor of
   load_exam.

 - results2csv : Dump the quiz results into a CSV file for further
   processing.

 - dump_user_data : Dump out relevalt user data for either all users or
   specified users.

For more information on these do this::

  $ ./manage.py help [command]

where [command] is one of the above.

Deploying via Apache
=====================

For any serious deployment, you will need to deploy the app using a real
webserver like Apache.  The ``apache/django.wsgi`` script should make it
easy to deploy this using mod_wsgi.  You will need to add a line of the
form:

        WSGIScriptAlias / "/var/www/online_test/apache/django.wsgi"

to your apache.conf.  For more details see the Django docs here:

https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.3/howto/deployment/modwsgi/


Sometimes you might be in the situation where you are not hosted as
"host.org/exam/"  but as "host.org/foo/exam/" for whatever reason.  In
this case edit "settings.py" and set the "URL_ROOT"  to the root you
have to serve at.  In the above example for "host.org/foo/exam" set
URL_ROOT='/foo'.