Tangelo

Welcome to Tangelo, the daily app designed for Princeton students. Have a Princeton netid? Get started at: https://tangelo.herokuapp.com/

Tangelo is our capstone project for COS 333 (Advanced Programming Techniques) taught by Professor Robert Dondero at Princeton University. A major goal of the course is to design and implement a networked three-tier system (a user interface, a database for persistent storage, and some processing between them), in teams of 3 to 5 students.

Inspired by the simplicity of bullet journals, our platform allows users to custom-build their perfect morning experience. Tangelo achieves this through a dashboard of widgets. In its most basic form, a widget is simply a feed that can display information and be moved around. By following widgets or creating their own, users can view and organize a vast array of pertinent information in real-time.

Our widgets offer the ideal balance of utility and delight, with sleek interfaces and robust functionality for the everyday experience. Have a live calendar of important academic updates or browse the Daily Prince headlines from a single dashboard interface. With widgets ranging from the uber-practical clock and weather to News updates and student events, we have something for every kind of person.

Make life simple. Get Tangelo.

Team Members

Ziv Batscha (Project Leader), Ryan Thorpe, Fawaz Ahmad, Austin Mejia

Demo

Coming soon!

Install

Basic Setup

$ git clone https://github.com/zbatscha/tangelo.git
$ cd tangelo
$ python -m venv venvTangelo
$ . venvTangelo/bin/activate
(venvTangelo) $ pip install -r requirements.txt

PostgreSQL Database Quickstart

Install postgresql

Mac

Option 1, using Homebrew:

$ brew install postgresql
$ brew services start postgresql

Option 2: Visit https://postgresapp.com/.

Windows

Visit https://www.postgresql.org/download/windows/

Development database creation:

$ psql postgres
postgres=# CREATE DATABASE tangelo_test;

Protip: To easily visualize and manipulate Tangelo’s development database, we recommend installing a graphical client as well:

For Mac, Postico: https://eggerapps.at/postico/.

For Windows, pgAdmin 4: https://www.pgadmin.org/download/.

Environment Variables

Unix Bash (Linux, Mac, etc.)

(venvTangelo) $ export FLASK_ENV='development'
(venvTangelo) $ export DATABASE_URL='postgresql+psycopg2://user:password@127.0.0.1:5432/tangelo_test' 

user and password are unique to the values set upon database connection in postico. 5432 is the default port.

Flask requires a secret key to be set. To create a secret key, we suggest Python’s built-n secrets module:

$ python
>>> import secrets
>>> yourSecretKey = secrets.token_hex(16)

(venvTangelo) $ export SECRET_KEY='yourSecretKey'

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Setting API Keys

Tangelo is currently open for members of the Princeton community with a valid netid. To use the TigerBook API Request functionality when creating new users locally, you will need to set these two environment variables:

(venvTangelo) $ export TIGERBOOK_USERNAME='yourNetid'
(venvTangelo) $ export TIGERBOOK_KEY=’yourTigerbookKey’

To get your unique TigerBook API Key, login to Princeton CAS, and visit: https://tigerbook.herokuapp.com/api/v1/getkey/. The displayed string of characters is your key.

Our news widget requires an API Key. Get yours for free here: https://newsapi.org/, and set the variable:

(venvTangelo) $ export NEWS_KEY='yourNewsKey'
 

Populate Database with Custom Widgets

(venvTangelo) $ python setup_db.py

Run Development Server

(venvTangelo) $ python run.py port

For example, if port is set to 5000, go to http://localhost:5000.

Automated Content Updates with Celery

Tangelo currently includes 10 custom widgets designed and administered by our team. 5 of these widgets (Academic Calendar, COVID-19, News, Poem-a-Day, Princeton University News) require server-side content updates. To automate the process of updating tangelo administered content, we integrated a Celery Beat scheduler, allowing for script tasks to be executed at regular intervals (20-60 minutes). tasks.py initializes the Celery worker and task schedule. All scheduled tasks are managed by a Redis broker. To see this in action, install redis and launch the worker.

Install Redis (macOS):

$ brew install redis

In one terminal window, start the redis server:

(venvTangelo) $ redis-server

In another terminal window, start the worker:

(venvTangelo) $ celery -A tasks worker -B -E --loglevel=info

Additional Documents

Project Overview

User's Guide

Programmer's Guide (High-level)

Product Evaluation

Project Evaluation

Tangelo Slidedeck