🚀 AGORA Development Environment – Full Setup Guide

This guide is designed for new developers joining the AGORA project. It covers setting up the Python backend, dependency management, building API and GeoServer containers, and running everything with Docker Compose in both dev and production modes.

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📚 1. Python API & Dependency Management

AGORA's API is based on Python 3.10 using Poetry and Conda for dependency management.

📦 Poetry (Recommended)

poetry add --lock package_name
poetry update

• Automatically updates pyproject.toml and poetry.lock

🐍 Conda (for system-level or pip-incompatible packages)

conda install some_package=version
conda env export --from-history > environment.yml
conda-lock -f environment.yml --lockfile conda-lock.yml

Always run the image update script after changes:

./src/docker-python-env/create_docker_image.sh

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🧱 2. How the agora-api-image:latest is Created

🔁 Automatic Image Update Script

Path:

./src/docker-python-env/create_docker_image.sh

Logic:

if git diff --exit-code pyproject.toml environment.yml; then
  echo "No changes in dependencies. Skipping image update."
  exit 0
else
  docker commit agora-dev-api agora-api-image:latest
fi

This script ensures that the Docker image is updated only when library dependencies change. All developers and CI pipelines should use this.

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🌍 3. GeoServer Container Setup

AGORA uses a modular GeoServer build system with plugin support and custom CORS configuration.

📁 Structure

geoserver_agora/
├── plugins/                  # Plugin jars
├── Dockerfile                # Final image using base + plugins
├── download_plugins.sh

geoserver_base/
├── Dockerfile                # Base image
├── entrypoint.sh             # Startup logic
├── production_web.xml        # CORS etc.
├── set_geoserver_auth.sh     # Admin credentials
├── tasks.py                  # (Optional)

🏗 1. Build Base Image

cd geoserver_base/
docker build -t dcs-base-geoserver:2.24.4 .

📦 2. Download Plugins

cd geoserver_agora/
chmod +x download_plugins.sh
./download_plugins.sh "2.24.4" "mbstyle vectortiles"

⚠️ Warning: plugins/ will be wiped before downloading.

🚀 3. Build AGORA GeoServer Image

docker build . -t agora-geoserver:2.24.4

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🐳 4. Dev Image: Building & Running

To build and run the full dev environment:

chmod +x build_dev_container.sh
./build_dev_container.sh

Which runs:

docker compose -f docker-compose-dev.yml --env-file src/app/.env up -d --build

⚠️ Reminder

If you make any changes to dependencies in the API (pyproject.toml or environment.yml), you must run:

./src/docker-python-env/create_docker_image.sh

This ensures the dev image reflects those changes.

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⚙️ 5. Docker Compose (Dev & Prod)

🔧 Dev Mode

docker compose -f docker-compose-dev.yml --env-file src/app/.env up -d

🚀 Production Mode

docker compose -f docker-compose-prod.yml --env-file src/app/.env up -d

📁 Example .env

📌 Note: The .env file must be located at:

src/app/.env

This path is used by both docker-compose-dev.yml and docker-compose-prod.yml. A template is available at:

src/app/.env.example

⚠️ GeoServer Notice: Environment variables such as GEOSERVER_ADMIN_USER and GEOSERVER_ADMIN_PASSWORD are used by the GeoServer container only if declared in your docker-compose file. However, CORS-related settings (like GEOSERVER_CORS_ALLOWED_ORIGINS, etc.) must be set manually in geoserver_base/Dockerfile and rebuilt accordingly.

DATABASE_HOSTNAME=db
DATABASE_PORT=5432
DATABASE_NAME=agora
DATABASE_USERNAME=agora
DATABASE_PASSWORD=agora

SECRET_KEY=your_secret_key
ALGORITHM=HS256
ACCESS_TOKEN_EXPIRE_MINUTES=760
REFRESH_TOKEN_EXPIRE_MINUTES=1000

GEOSERVER_ADMIN_USER=admin
GEOSERVER_ADMIN_PASSWORD=geoserver2
GEOSERVER_PORT=8383
GEOSERVER_CORS_ENABLED=True
GEOSERVER_CORS_ALLOWED_ORIGINS=*
GEOSERVER_CORS_ALLOWED_METHODS=GET,POST,PUT,DELETE,HEAD,OPTIONS
GEOSERVER_CORS_ALLOWED_HEADERS=*
GEOSERVER_CSRF_DISABLED=true

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📁 6. API Code Structure

app/
├── auth/         # Login, Register, Token
├── db/           # SQLAlchemy + GeoAlchemy2 models
├── geoserver/    # GeoServer REST API integration
├── ligfinder/    # Spatial analysis module
├── utils/        # Shared helpers
└── main.py       # FastAPI entry point

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🧪 7. Dev Utilities

• Enter API container:

docker exec -it agora-dev-api bash

• Restart only the API:

docker compose restart api

• Tail logs:

docker logs -f agora-dev-api

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✅ 8. Production Deployment Note

In production, the API container directly mounts the src/ directory from the main repository.

To reflect new changes, you must log into the production server and run:

git pull

This ensures the latest codebase is updated inside the container. Since the container uses the mounted src/ folder directly, no rebuild is required after pulling updates. Just make sure to test changes in dev before pushing to production.

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💾 9. PostgreSQL Backup & Restore

This section explains how to take backups from production and restore them on development. This is the preferred way to replicate the live environment locally.

🔄 Recommended Workflow (from production → dev)

1. Take a Backup on Production Server (Tar Format)

If a volume is mounted like:

volumes:
  - ./database/dumps:/var/lib/postgresql/dumps

Then simply run:

docker exec -it agora-dev-db bash -c "pg_dump -U agora -F t -f /var/lib/postgresql/dumps/dump-$(date +%Y%m%d%H%M).tar agora"

This creates a file like dump-202506241446.tar inside ./database/dumps on host.

If you do not mount a volume, you must copy the file manually:

docker cp agora-dev-db:/tmp/dump.tar ./dump-202506241446.tar

⚠️ Important: GUI Tool Notes (e.g., DBeaver)

You can use GUI tools like DBeaver for backup and restore only if you also use the same tool for both actions. That means:

• If you export via DBeaver, you must import again via DBeaver GUI.
• Do not mix GUI-generated exports with CLI tools like pg_restore.

Incompatibilities may otherwise occur, such as:

• pg_restore: error: unsupported version (1.16) in file header
• ERROR: unrecognized configuration parameter "transaction_timeout"

✅ Preferred: use pg_dump and pg_restore directly inside containers.

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2. Restore into Dev DB

Preferred approach if volume is already mounted:

volumes:
  - ./database/dumps:/var/lib/postgresql/dumps

Then place your backup file under ./database/dumps/ and run:

docker exec -it agora-dev-db bash -c "PGPASSWORD='agora' pg_restore -U agora -h localhost -p 5432 -d agora -c -v /var/lib/postgresql/dumps/dump-202506241446.tar"

Alternative if no volume is mounted:

docker cp ./dump-202506241446.tar agora-dev-db:/tmp/dump.tar

docker exec -it agora-dev-db bash -c "PGPASSWORD='agora' pg_restore -U agora -h localhost -p 5432 -d agora -c -v /tmp/dump.tar"

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