This section describes how to install, configure, and set up Studio.
This section provides installation steps for the impatient, Debian Linux users. If you want detailed information on the installation steps, or if you’re installing Studio on Windows, skip this section.
Install the system dependencies:
$ apt-get install python cgi-mapserver python-mapscript python-gdal
Install Studio:
$ wget http://camptocamp.github.com/Studio/_static/go-studio.py
$ python go-studio.py env
Create configuration file:
$ ./env/bin/paster make-config Studio studio.ini
Set up:
$ ./env/bin/paster setup-app studio.ini
Start up:
$ ./env/bin/paster serve studio.ini
Done.
Studio has two types of dependencies: pure Python dependencies, and system dependencies. Pure Python dependencies are installed by Studio’s installation script (we’ll come to this shortly). System dependencies are installed separately.
System dependencies:
To install the system dependencies on a Linux system, it is recommended to rely on your distribution packages. For example, on Debian-like system, the required packages can be installed with:
$ apt-get install python cgi-mapserver python-mapscript python-gdal
To verify that MapServer CGI is correctly installed you can open http://localhost/cgi-bin/mapserv in your browser. You should get “No query information to decode. QUERY_STRING is set, but empty.”
On a Windows system, you need to install Python 2.5 from http://www.python.org/download/releases/2.5.4/ and its pwin32 (a.k.a win32api) extension from http://sourceforge.net/projects/pywin32/files/.
To get MapServer and OGR/GDAL install the MS4W distribution from http://www.maptools.org/ms4w/ (2.3.1 is the current stable version).
Note
You should install the same version of Python as the one supported by the Python bindings (MapScript, OGR/GDAL) provided with MS4W. For MS4W v2.3.1, you should rely on Python v2.5.x.
To verify that MapServer CGI is correctly installed you can open http://localhost/cgi-bin/mapserv.exe in your browser. You should get “No query information to decode. QUERY_STRING is set, but empty.”
Start by creating a folder named studio, at the location of your choice. This folder will contain your installation of Studio
You can now download the Studio installation script go-studio.py. Place this script in the studio folder.
Now open a console, go into the studio folder and execute the go-studio.py script there. You would use the following on a Unix system:
$ python go-studio.py env
and the following on a Windows system:
C:\studio> C:\Python25\python.exe go-studio.py env
In the above command it is assumed that your studio folder is directly under C:\, it also assumes that Python is installed C:\Python25, which is the default.
env is the name of the virtual Python environment Studio will be installed in. Do not worry if you don’t know what a virtual Python environment is, you need not understand that to complete the installation.
When installing on Windows, you also need to manually install the Python bindings for GDAL and MapScript in this virtual environment.
Before going to the next section, you must activate the virtual environment. Use the following on a Unix system:
$ source env/bin/activate
and the following on a Windows system:
C:\studio> env\Scripts\activate.bat
On a Windows system, you also need to set up MS4W environment variables:
C:\studio> C:\Program Files\ms4w\setenv.bat
If you use Python 2.5 (enter python -V in a console to check) you’re done with the installation, you can go directly to the next section. If you use Python 2.4, you need to install the pysqlite package as it is not distributed with Python 2.4. On Unix do:
$ easy_install pysqlite
Now that Studio is installed, it is time to create your Studio configuration.
On Unix use:
(env) $ paster make-config Studio studio.ini
On Windows use:
(env) C:\studio> paster.exe make-config Studio studio.ini
You will be asked for a database URL, Studio indeed requires a database for its own use (to store information about users, datastores, mapfiles, etc.). If you just press “Enter”, Studio will use an SQLite database, which will be automatically created at setup time (see the next section).
If you have a PostgreSQL database and would like Studio to use that database enter something like the following as the database URL:
postgres://username:password@host:port/dbname
where user is the name of the database user, password is the password for that user, host is the name of the host executing PostgreSQL, and dbname the name of the database.
If you want Studio to use PostgreSQL you will need to install the psycopg2 package in the Python virtual environment. On a Unix system do:
(env) $ easy_install psycopg2
On Windows, install psycopg2 for Python 2.5 from http://www.stickpeople.com/projects/python/win-psycopg/.
The above make-config command will also ask for the Url to the mapserv CGI. So press “Enter” to keep the default, or enter a correct MapServer URL.
On Windows, MapServer is provided with MS4W, so you should enter the following URL:
http://localhost/cgi-bin/mapserv.exe
Then you will be asked for a Password for default admin user. Again, press Enter to keep the default, or enter a custom password.
Note
These configuration parameters can also be edited directly in the .ini generated file (studio.ini in our example).
You now need to set up Studio, which means creating the database schema and insert initial data.
Studio comes with a default datastore, which is a directory to which Studio users will be able to add geographic files. This datastore is pre-populated with a few geographic files, mostly for testing purposes.
If you have a PostGIS database that you would like to see as a datastore in Studio, edit your studio.ini file, uncomment the line that sets the default_datastore_postgis option, and change the value of that option as appropriate (to match the parameters of your database).
To set up Studio, use the following command on Unix:
(env) $ paster setup-app studio.ini
and the following on Windows:
(env) C:\studio> paster.exe setup-app studio.ini
If you chose to have Studio rely on SQLite then a studio.db file, the SQLite database, should now be present in your studio directory.
Studio is now ready, let’s start it!
On Unix:
(env) $ paster serve studio.ini
On Windows:
(env) C:\studio> paster.exe serve studio.ini
An admin account has been created (when running setup-app), so you can sign in using the following credentials:
Note that you can also register new users directly from Studio home page. By default, these users will belong to the enduser group and will have restricted rights. This can be changed by editing the following line in the studio.ini file:
# default group for user creation ("enduser", "admin")
default_group = enduser
Two groups are currently available:
In the user interface, users from the admin group will have acces to the data manager tab, which end users won’t see.
The Paste HTTP server, very convenient for testing and development, is known for delivering poor performance. A common alternative for production is Apache’s WSGI module, mod_wsgi. This section explains how to execute Studio in mod_wsgi.
In the following we assume that the studio.ini file and the virtual environment are located in the /var/www/studio directory.
To be able to run Studio in mod_wsgi a Python script must be written. For that create a file named studio.wsgi in the /var/www/studio directory with this content:
import site
site.addsitedir('/var/www/studio/env/lib/python2.5/site-packages')
from paste.deploy import loadapp
application = loadapp('config:/var/www/studio/studio.ini')
Now you need to edit your Apache virtual host’s configuration and add this:
WSGIScriptAlias /studio /var/www/studio/studio.wsgi
With the above line Studio is made available at the URL /studio.
For maximum performance the Apache configuration can be extended. Here are examples of directives:
# zip resources
<LocationMatch /studio/>
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/xml text/css application/x-javascript application/javascript application/json
</LocationMatch>
# make Apache directly serve static resources
Alias /studio/css/ /var/www/studio/env/lib/python2.5/site-packages/Studio-0.5.1-py2.5.egg/studio/public/css/
Alias /studio/js/ /var/www/studio/env/lib/python2.5/site-packages/Studio-0.5.1-py2.5.egg/studio/public/js/
Alias /studio/images/ /var/www/studio/env/lib/python2.5/site-packages/Studio-0.5.1-py2.5.egg/studio/public/images/