RadicalxChange Voice

RxC Voice is an app for decentralized democratic governance. It is developed by RadicalxChange to model and experiment with a new democratic process for decentralized democracy that leverages Quadratic Funding, pol.is, and Quadratic Voting.

This repo also hosts RxC Conversations, a wrapper for Pol.is conversations held in the RadicalxChange community.

Local Setup - Docker

The Docker method is recommended for non-developers or anyone who wants to quickly get the project running off-the-shelf. The Docker method is also recommended for production. docker-compose-prod.yml can be used to spin up production containers.

• Install Docker

• Install docker-compose (included in Docker Desktop for Mac and Windows)

• Clone project -

git clone --config core.autocrlf=input https://github.com/RadicalxChange/rxc-voice.git
cd rxc-voice
git checkout development

• Create .env file and fill up suitable environment variables.

cp .env-example .env

• Configure urls in rxc-voice/src/utils/urls.ts -- comment out the production urls and uncomment the local urls.

• Build images and stand up containers (make sure docker is running first).

# build and stand up containers
docker-compose -f docker-compose-voice.yml up --build

OR

# build containers
docker-compose -f docker-compose-voice.yml build
# then stand up containers
docker-compose -f docker-compose-voice.yml up

• Create a superuser to access the admin site

docker exec -it rxc-voice_api_1 ./manage.py createsuperuser


The project is now up and running -

Backend API - http://127.0.0.1:8000

RxC Voice - http://localhost:4000

Deploy Instructions - virtual environment

The virtual environment method takes a few extra steps to set up, but is great for lightweight, fast development. This is recommended for developers who are spending a non-trivial amount of time working on the project.

• Install PostgreSQL and make sure it's running.

• Use this guide to install pip and venv.

• Create a virtual environment to hold RxC Voice backend python packages

python3 -m venv ./venv/rxc-voice-backend

• Clone project -

git clone https://github.com/RadicalxChange/rxc-voice.git
cd rxc-voice
git checkout master

• Create .env file and fill up suitable environment variables

cp .env-example .env

• Configure urls in rxc-voice/src/utils/urls.ts -- comment out the production urls and uncomment the local urls.

• Activate your virtual environment

source ./venv/rxc-voice-backend/bin/activate

• Install required python packages in your virtual environment

cd backend/RxcVoiceApi
python3 -m pip install -r requirements.txt

• Make database migrations

python manage.py makemigrations main

• Apply migrations

python manage.py migrate

• Create a superuser to access the admin site. Don't forget to give the user a password, you'll need it to log in to the admin.

python manage.py createsuperuser

• Start backend server

python manage.py runserver

• Open a new terminal window and install required frontend packages (your venv should not be activated)

cd rxc-voice/rxc-voice
npm install

• start frontend server

npm start

The project is now up and running -

Backend API - http://127.0.0.1:8000

RxC Voice - http://localhost:4000

Creating users and accessing the site for testing

• Log in to the admin site at http://127.0.0.1:8000/admin
• Create a new user and profile. You can do this either via the admin or the frontend UI
• If you are unable to verify your account via the frontend, you may have to set is_verified for your new profile as true in the admin
• Via the frontend, log in with your user's username and password.
• If you can't log in, verify the environment variable in rxc-voice/src/utils/urls.ts are set correctly
• Once logged in, verify you can create an event, and that you can view the event under processes in the admin

Contribute

For questions, comments, or troubleshooting, please feel free to open an issue on this repo. Our team currently includes only one full-time developer--any kind of contribution from the community is greatly appreciated!

Troubleshooting

database "DATABASE_NAME" does not exist

If you are building your Docker containers, and the rxc-voice_api_1 throws this error, you probably have already initialized a database with another name.

• connect to rxc-voice_db_1 and open shell

docker exec -it rxc-voice_db_1 bash

• open psql shell and list databases

psql -U POSTGRES_USER postgres-# \l

• copy the name of the correct database and update the value of POSTGRES_DB in your .env file

Chat with us

Ask on Discord: https://discord.gg/ nw5QvvxQj7