edx-platform/docs/internal/discussion.md

# Running the discussion service

## Instruction for Mac

## Installing Mongodb

If you haven't done so already:

    brew install mongodb

Make sure that you have mongodb running. You can simply open a new terminal tab and type:

    mongod

## Installing elasticsearch

    brew install elasticsearch

For debugging, it's often more convenient to have elasticsearch running in a terminal tab instead of in background. To do so, simply open a new terminal tab and then type:

    elasticsearch -f

## Setting up the discussion service

You can retrieve the source code from the [github repository](https://github.com/edx/cs_comments_service).

First go into the edx_all directory. Then type

    git clone https://github.com/edx/cs_comments_service.git
    cd cs_comments_service/

If you see a prompt asking "Do you wish to trust this .rvmrc file?", type "y"

Now if you see this error "Gemset 'cs_comments_service' does not exist," run the following command to create the gemset and then use the rvm environment manually:

    rvm gemset create 'cs_comments_service'
    rvm use 1.9.3@cs_comments_service

Now use the following command to install required packages:

    bundle install

The following command creates database indexes:

    bundle exec rake db:init

Now use the following command to generate seeds (basically some random comments in Latin):

    bundle exec rake db:seed

It's done! Launch the app now:

    ruby app.rb

## Integrating with the edx platform

The API key must match on both sides. It is configured here:
* edx-platform: COMMENTS_SERVICE_KEY in your dev.py file (dev environment) or ENV_TOKENS (prod environment)
* cs_comments_service: api_key in the application.yml file (dev environment) or ENV variable (prod environment)


## Running the delayed job worker

In the discussion service, notifications are handled asynchronously using a third party gem called delayed_job. If you want to test this functionality, run the following command in a separate tab:

    bundle exec rake jobs:work

## From the edx-platform django app, initialize roles and permissions

To fully test the discussion forum, you might want to act as a moderator or an administrator. Currently, the roles are:

 * moderators can manage everything in the forum, and
 * administrators can manage everything plus assigning and revoking moderator status of other users.

First make sure that the database is up-to-date:

    rake resetdb

If you have created users in the edx-platform django apps when the comment service was not running, you will need to one-way sync the users into the comment service back end database:

    ./manage.py lms sync_user_info

Now initialize roles and permissions, providing a course id. See the example below. Note that you do not need to do this for Studio-created courses, as the Studio application does this for you.

    ./manage.py lms seed_permissions_roles "MITx/6.002x/2012_Fall"

To assign yourself as a moderator, use the following command (assuming your username is "test", and the course id is "MITx/6.002x/2012_Fall"):

    ./manage.py lms assign_role test Moderator "MITx/6.002x/2012_Fall"

To assign yourself as an administrator, use the following command

    ./manage.py lms assign_role test Administrator "MITx/6.002x/2012_Fall"

## Some other useful commands

### generate seeds for a specific forum
The seed generating command above assumes that you have the following discussion tags somewhere in the course data:

    <discussion for="Welcome Video" id="video_1" discussion_category="Video"/>
    <discussion for="Lab 0: Using the Tools" id="lab_1" discussion_category="Lab"/>
    <discussion for="Lab Circuit Sandbox" id="lab_2" discussion_category="Lab"/>

For example, you can insert them into overview section as following:

    <chapter name="Overview">
      <section format="Video" name="Welcome">
        <vertical>
          <video youtube="0.75:izygArpw-Qo,1.0:p2Q6BrNhdh8,1.25:1EeWXzPdhSA,1.50:rABDYkeK0x8"/>
          <discussion for="Welcome Video" id="video_1" discussion_category="Video"/>
        </vertical>
      </section>
      <section format="Lecture Sequence" name="System Usage Sequence">
        <%include file="sections/introseq.xml"/>
      </section>
      <section format="Lab" name="Lab0: Using the tools">
        <vertical>
          <html> See the <a href="/section/labintro"> Lab Introduction </a> or <a href="/static/handouts/schematic_tutorial.pdf">Interactive Lab Usage Handout </a> for information on how to do the lab </html>
          <problem name="Lab 0: Using the Tools" filename="Lab0" rerandomize="false"/>
          <discussion for="Lab 0: Using the Tools" id="lab_1" discussion_category="Lab"/>
        </vertical>
      </section>
      <section format="Lab" name="Circuit Sandbox">
        <vertical>
          <problem name="Circuit Sandbox" filename="Lab_sandbox" rerandomize="false"/>
          <discussion for="Lab Circuit Sandbox" id="lab_2" discussion_category="Lab"/>
        </vertical>
      </section>
    </chapter>

Currently, only the attribute "id" is actually used, which identifies discussion forum. In the code for the data generator, the corresponding lines are:

    generate_comments_for("video_1")
    generate_comments_for("lab_1")
    generate_comments_for("lab_2")

We also have a command for generating comments within a forum with the specified id:

    bundle exec rake db:generate_comments[type_the_discussion_id_here]

For instance, if you want to generate comments for a new discussion tab named "lab_3", then use the following command

    bundle exec rake db:generate_comments[lab_3]

### Running tests for the service

    bundle exec rspec

Warning: the development and test environments share the same elasticsearch index. After running tests, search may not work in the development environment. You simply need to reindex:

    bundle exec rake db:reindex_search

### debugging the service

You can use the following command to launch a console within the service environment:

    bundle exec rake console

### show user roles and permissions

Use the following command to see the roles and permissions of a user in a given course (assuming, again, that the username is "test"):

    ./manage.py lms show_permissions moderator

You need to make sure that the environment variables are exported. Otherwise you would need to do

    ./manage.py lms show_permissions moderator