DEMOS2/README.md

DEMOS2

Prototype Django-based e-voting application, to demonstrate DEMOS2's client-side encryption e-voting.

The previous repository for DEMOS2 by Carey Williams can be found at: https://github.com/CareyJWilliams/DEMOS2

Setup

Main Application Dependencies

• Python
  • Version 2.7; anything higher than this will not currently work
  • All Python packages specified in requirements.txt; PyCharm will detect these dependencies and offer installation
• MySQL Server: Community Edition
  • Initialise with 'legacy password authentication'
  • Create a new MySQL DB user with the default username and password specified in aullauthdemo/settings.py
  • Create a new MySQL DB called demos2 (also specified in aullauthdemo/settings.py), making sure to set the charset to 'UTF8'

Database setup

After installing the above dependencies, issue the following command to initialise the DB:

python manage.py migrate

The first run will produce a django.db.utils.IntegrityError: (1215, 'Cannot add foreign key constraint') error. Issue the command a second time and it will complete successfully.

Settings

allauthdemo/settings.py specifies the Google reCAPTCHA site key and private key, which will need changing when deployed onto a new domain. There is also a DOMAIN setting within the file that needs updating during deployment as things like email functionality depend on this setting for correct URL generation during event preparation etc.

Emails from the application are currently sent from the following email account which can be updated within the settings:

demos2.no.reply@gmail.com

NodeJS Dependencies

The Node.js crypto server depends on the milagro-crypto-js and express modules. A package.json file can be found in the Node/ directory with these dependency requirements and therefore from this folder you can run:

npm install

Once the dependencies have been installed, you can then run the node server as per the below instructions.

Instructions

Step 1: Running the Python app and creating a new user account

You can run the server with the following command:

python manage.py runserver

The application will then be available at 127.0.0.1:8000.

You can then click on 'Join' to create a new user account.

Step 2: Running the Node.js Server

The Node.js server exposes a lot of cryptographic operations that the application depends on throughout. To run the server, issue the following command line request from the Node/ folder:

node index.js

Step 3: Running Celery

Celery is used to run tasks asynchronously and the DEMOS2 application can't run without this application. A bash script called start_celery_worker.sh is provided to make starting a worker as easy as possible:

./start_celery_worker.sh