Schenker Documents Online

The Schenker Documents Online project is a TEI XML-based project published via, Apache Cocoon, a Tomcat web application. The project has been containerised using Docker Compose to enhance deployment efficiency and sustainability. The containerised setup comprises five main services: an nginx proxy, a Tomcat server, a Django application, a Postgres database, and an nginx server.

1. nginx-proxy: This service acts as a reverse proxy, dynamically routing incoming HTTP requests to the appropriate backend services based on the requested hostname and path. It ensures that traffic is directed correctly and efficiently within the application infrastructure.
2. tomcat: This service hosts the Java-based web application. It is responsible for processing and delivering dynamic content generated from the TEI XML data. The Tomcat server is configured to handle substantial traffic and resource-intensive operations.
3. django: This service runs the Django web application framework, which is used for developing the backend of the Schenker Documents Online project.
4. postgres: This service runs the PostgreSQL database. It stores all the data for the Django application.
5. nginx: This service is dedicated to serving static assets, images, and other resources required by the web application. By offloading the delivery of static content to a separate server, it improves the overall performance and responsiveness of the web application.

Get Started

Follow these steps to set up and run the project using Docker Compose.

Note that these instructions cover only the local setup; server deployment is not covered here.

Pre-requisites

Before you begin, ensure you have the following installed on your system:

• Docker
• Docker Compose

Running the application

1. Clone this repository
2. Set up the environment file

Create a .env file inside the compose directory with the following content:

# Set to true in production environments
PRODUCTION=false

# Ports for nginx proxy
NGINX_PROXY_PORTS=80:80

# Django settings
# Use a strong and unique key in production
DJANGO_SECRET_KEY=generate_secret_key
DJANGO_VIRTUAL_PATH="~^/(accounts|admin|eats)/"

# Nginx settings
NGINX_VIRTUAL_PATH="~^/(_a/|images/|media/|static/|robots.txt)"

# PostgreSQL settings
# In production, use Docker secrets or environment variables managed by the orchestrator
POSTGRES_HOST=postgres
POSTGRES_PORT=5432
POSTGRES_DB=database_name
POSTGRES_USER=database_user
POSTGRES_PASSWORD=database_pwd

# Tomcat settings
TOMCAT_VIRTUAL_PATH=/

# Host settings
VIRTUAL_HOST=localhost,127.0.0.1

Ensure to replace database_name, database_user, and database_pwd with your actual database credentials.

1. Start the services

   Use the provided helper script docker.sh to build and start the services:

   ./docker.sh

2. Access the application

   Once all services are running, you can access the web application via your web browser at http://localhost/.

To stop the application press CTRL+C in the same terminal window where the docker.sh script is running.

This project is set up with Docker Compose, to run it locally, install Docker and run the following command on a terminal:

./docker.sh

Updating the Solr index

To update or create the Solr index, follow these steps to connect to the Tomcat container and run the indexing command:

cd compose
docker compose -p data_$INSTANCE_NAME exec tomcat sh /xmod/index.sh

The -p flag specifies the project name and is necessary for running the command on servers to ensure the correct context. Replace $INSTANCE_NAME with the appropriate instance name for your setup.

For local development, you can omit the -p flag.