Stako

STAKO is a research-focus tool created at the WildLab in the University of Washington to enable running experiments with users of Stack Overflow. Our goals is to improve how users experience SO and to include more people in the conversation.

It has three components: a Restful API (inside stako-api folder), a Browser extension (inside stako-browser) and a website in the stako-site folder (!!! right now under-developed !!!). We mainly used Python3 and Flask for the backend components, and basic web-technology like Javascript, JQuery and CSS for the frontend.

How to run Stako Server?

1. You will need a MongoDB. After installing it, configure the stako.settings inside the stako-api to point to the MongoDB process. We provide a model for this file, just copy it and change the information about the DB.

2. Install the requirements using PIP or whatever you prefer. We recommend using a Python3 virtualenv for that.

?> source [VENV_PATH}/bin/activate
(VENV) ?> python3 -m pip install -r requirements.txt
(VENV) ?> cd stako-api

3. Run the unit_tests to check if everything is set correctly.

(VENV) ?/stako-api/> python3 -m unittest stako/api/data/test/*.py
(VENV) ?/stako-api/> python3 -m unittest stako/api/test/*.py

4. Run the Flask API dev server:

(VENV) ?/stako-api/> FLASK_APP=stako.api.api flask run

You'll probably see something like INFO:werkzeug: * Running on http://127.0.0.1:5000/ and that means that you have a stako-api server running at that URL. You can go to a browser now and access something like 127.0.0.1:5000/v1/user/test/. But, as you have no registered or authenticated user, you'll get a 401 HTTP error, which is great, meaning that the API is not accepting your unauthorized call.

Adding real data

TODO!

Production server

TODO!

How to run the Stako Site/Webapp?

To run the Stako WebApp, you need to:

1. already have installed the STAKO requirements (if VENV, also activate it)
2. and have a STAKO API running and accessible

Dev mode

1. Copy the settings.py.model file to settings.py and point it to your API process
2. Enter the stako-site folder
3. Execute FLASK_APP=stako.webapp.main flask run --port=5050

If all is fine, when accessing this server on your browser you should see a "HELLO WORLD" message.