coss_archiving/README.md

Auto_news

A utility to fetch article requests from slack and generate pdfs for them, fully automatically.

Running - Pure docker

I recommend running with docker compose instead

How to run - auto archiving mode

In this mode the program is launched as a docker container, in a headless mode. For persistence purposes a local storage volume is required, but that's it!

docker run -it -v <your storage>:/app/file_storage/ auto_news

You can specify additional parameters:

docker run -it -v <your storage>:/app/file_storage/ auto_news debug runs with debug values (does not write to prod db, does not send mails)

docker run -it -v <your storage>:/app/file_storage/ auto_news upload catches up on incomplete uploads to archive.

docker run -it -v <your storage>:/app/file_storage/ auto_news reducedfetch makes assumption about the status of the slack chat and greatly reduces the number of api calls (faster start up).

These parameters can be combined (mostyl for testing I guess)

Finally for manual file verification:

docker run -it -v <your storage>:/app/file_storage/ -e DISPLAY=":0" --network host -v \$XAUTHORITY:/root/.Xauthority auto_news check lets you visually verify the downloaded files. The additional parameters are required in order to open guis on the host.

How to run - development mode

In this mode, a docker container is launched with an additional volume, the local code. You can test your code without the need to rebuild the image.

docker run -it -v <your storage>:/app/file_storage/ -v <your code>:/code/ --entry-point /bin/bash auto_news You are droppped into a bash shell, in which you can navigate to the /code directory and then test live.

Cheat-sheet Remy:

docker run -it -v /mnt/Data/COSS/Downloads/auto_news.container/:/app/file_storage/ auto_news

docker run -it -v /mnt/Data/COSS/Downloads/auto_news.container/:/app/file_storage/ -v /mnt/Data/COSS/Development/auto_news/app:/code --entrypoint /bin/bash auto_news

docker run -it -v /mnt/Data/COSS/Downloads/auto_news.container/:/app/file_storage/ -e DISPLAY=":0" --network host -v XAUTHORITY:/root/.Xauthority auto_news check

Running - Docker compose

I also wrote a rudimentary docker compose file which makes running much more simple. Just run

docker compose --env-file <desired mode> up

All relevant passthroughs and mounts are specified through the env-file, for which I configured 4 versions: production, debug (development in general), upload and check. These files will have to be adapted to your individual setup but can be reused more easily.

For the debug env-file, you will likely want interactivity, so you need to run:

docker compose --env-file env/debug up -d && docker compose --env-file env/debug exec auto_news bash && docker compose --env-file env/debug down

Building

The software (firefox, selenium, python) changes frequently. For non-breaking changes it is useful to regularly clean build the docker image! This is also crucial to update the code itself.

In docker, simply run:

docker build -t auto_news --no-cache .

where the Dockerfile has to be in the working directory

In docker compose, run the usual command, but append

docker compose ... up --build

Roadmap:

[ ] automatically upload files to NAS

[ ] handle paywalled sites like faz, spiegel, .. through their dedicated edu-friendly sites ...