Frontend web app for MOCCA

Installation

Get the latest MOCCA from !!! TO DO !!!.

Install Python (3.11.4 has been tested) and the packages according to requirements.txt (pip install -r requirements.txt).

Make sure Python can find the MOCCA package, ideally by adding [PARENT DIR]/!!! TO DO !!!/src to PYTHONPATH.

Start the application by python app.py or using the run.bat file. The frontend can be then accessed from http://localhost:8050/.

Compiling to executable

Run pyinstaller app.spec. The executable should be created in dist/mocca.exe.

Code Standards

This section describes the directory structure, file structure, naming of variables, and overall standards for the code.

Directory Structure

The entry point is app.py, Dash pages are in pages/[page_name], all campaign data and relevant functions are in campaign/, and global variables and local files are handled in cache/.

Each page folder contains the following:

• __init__.py file with layout() function
• all functions that generate layout must be in files layout*.py
• all callbacks must be in files callbacks*.py
• other functions (data processing, parsing) should be in separate files

Code standards

Imports are in following order:

• dataclasses and typing
• imports from external packages
• imports from mocca
• imports from this project

All classes shoud use dataclass, attributes must be typed and have description.

Functions should be typed (both parameters and return type), and contain description. This may not be neccessary for small helper functions...

Global variables and cached files

Global variables must be stored in flask cache - this is also neccessary because of how the server works. The variables should be accessed and modified only through functions cache.get_[variable_name]() and cache.set_[variable_name](). This helps with typing and prevents spelling mistakes.

Cached files can be stored in the _cache folder. All information about the cached files must be in cache.files.

Note that the current implementation is not suitable for having multiple clients - file cache needs to be changed later!

Running background jobs

The background callbacks provided by Dash don't work very well with flask-cache and are slow.

Background jobs are thus done using python threading and the Interval component.

Naming variables

All IDs of html components must be [page-name]-[component-type]-[anything else], for example process-dropdown-input-file-type.