DIRECT Framework Webapp

A Django webapp implementing the DIRECT competencies framework as a website that can:

• Allow browsing of all the skills.
• Allow people to score their own skills and view their skill wheels.
• Display and link the professional development resources curated for each skill.

This Django project uses:

• pip-tools for packaging and dependency management.
• pre-commit for various linting, formatting and static type checking. Pre-commit hooks are automatically kept updated with pre-commit.ci.
• pytest and GitHub Actions.

pip-tools is chosen as a lightweight dependency manager that adheres to the latest standards using pyproject.toml.

Related links

• DIRECT framework
• History of the project - including competency wheels UI
• Skills and competencies - definitions
• Contributors

Current Status

• Initial research
• Initial development <-- We are here
• Minimum viable product
• Alpha release
• Feature-complete release

Installation

You must have Python version 3.14 or later installed.

To get started:

1. Create and activate a virtual environment:

   python -m venv .venv
   source .venv/bin/activate # with Powershell on Windows: `.venv\Scripts\Activate.ps1`

2. Install development requirements:

   pip install -r dev-requirements.txt

3. (Optionally) install tools for building documentation:

   pip install -r doc-requirements.txt

4. Install the git hooks:

   pre-commit install

5. First-time database setup:

   Before running the server for the first time, initialise the database tables as follows:

   python manage.py migrate

   If you run into the following error, then you've missed this step:

   django.db.utils.OperationalError: no such table: main_skilllevel

6. Run the webapp:

   python manage.py runserver

   When running the webapp for the first time you may get a warning similar to:

   You have 19 unapplied migration(s). Your project may not work properly until you apply the migrations for app(s): admin, auth, contenttypes, main, sessions.

   If this is the case, stop your webapp (with CONTROL-C) and apply the migrations with:

   python manage.py migrate

   then restart it.

7. Run the tests:

   pytest

8. Create an admin account to access admin backend:

   python manage.py createsuperuser

9. Populate the database using a snapshot of v2.0 of the framework (this is not necessarily the latest live version, so this is only used for development).

   python manage.py loaddata direct_webapp/fixtures/framework-2-0.json

Installation with Docker

The app can be run within a Docker container and a docker-compose.yml file is provided to make this easy for development.

Requirements:

1. You have a modern version of Docker installed.
2. You have a JSON version of the framework saved at data/skills-competencies-framework.json.

To launch the server run:

docker compose up

The app will be available at http://127.0.0.1:8000/

As above, create a superuser with

docker compose exec app python manage.py createsuperuser

The framework should be automatically loaded into the database.

Updating Dependencies

To add or remove dependencies:

1. Edit the dependencies variables in the pyproject.toml file (aim to keep development tools separate from the project requirements).
2. Update the requirements files:
   • pip-compile for requirements.txt - the project requirements.
   • pip-compile --extra dev -o dev-requirements.txt for the development requirements.
   • pip-compile --extra doc -o doc-requirements.txt for the documentation tools.
3. Sync the files with your installation (install packages):
   • pip-sync *requirements.txt

To upgrade pinned versions, use the --upgrade flag with pip-compile.

Versions can be restricted from updating within the pyproject.toml using standard python package version specifiers, i.e. "black<23" or "pip-tools!=6.12.2"

Frontend Node

The front-end build is contained in node/, including its package manifest, lockfile, tooling configuration, sources and tests. You do not need Node.js to develop Django pages using the committed assets. Only rebuild when changing front-end sources or dependencies.

Run npm commands from node/, or use npm --prefix node from the repository root. Built assets remain in main/static/assets/; Django deployment still consumes those assets without running npm.

See Frontend Node for details on working with the NPM-based frontend asset pipeline.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the DisCouRSE Network+, which received funding through the UKRI Digital Research Infrastructure Programme

Contributors

Dave Horsfall 🎨 💻 📆 🚧	Adrian D'Alessandro 🎨 💻 ⚠️ 🚧 📆	Ryan 💻 🚇 🔧 🚧	T D James 💻 ⚠️ 🚧	Connor Aird 💻 ⚠️ 🚧	Andrew Gait 🤔 💻	Bryn Noel Ubald 🔧 💻
Jason Klebes 🐛	sbland 💻 🎨 🤔 🚧	barneydobson 💻	Aleksandra Nenadic 💻 🚧	Saranjeet Kaur 🚧 💻	github-actions[bot] 🚧	pre-commit-ci[bot] 💻
Aman Goel 🚧	Phil Reed 🚧 💻	Toby Hodges 💻	geodaoyu 💻	Christopher Cave-Ayland 🚧	Sahil Raja 🚧 ⚠️ 💻	Max Gamill 💻
Kevin Rue-Albrecht 💻	mjademitchell 💻	Eli Chadwick 💻	Laurent Gil 💻