Getting Started¶

Wazimap is a Django application that you’ll need to configure correctly before you can use it. You’re going to need to import place metadata, census data and write some code to tell Wazimap what census data you want to show.

Wazimap is a bit different to most Django applications. It comes with all the URLs and most of the settings that you’re going to need, so you need to tell Django to load the details from the Wazimap application, rather than your Django application like normal.

Note

You’ll need to choose a short name for your application. In these examples, we’ll be using wazimap_ex for Wazimap Example. We suggest using the two-letter country code of your country in place of the ex.

Setup a python virtual environment, we recommend using virtualenv.

Install Django (version 1.8.0 or newer) and start a new Django project.

pip install 'django<1.10'
django-admin startproject wazimap_ex
cd wazimap_ex

This will have created some files that are unnecessary because Wazimap already provides them. You can safely delete them.
```
rm wazimap_ex/urls.py wazimap_ex/wsgi.py
```
Wazimap needs GDAL installed to allow users to download data in KML, GeoJSON, Excel, etc. GDAL can be complicated to install. For development, we recommend you follow the Django instructions.
Install Wazimap and its dependencies
```
pip install wazimap
```
At this point you have the absolute basics in place. We’re now going to configure your Django application to load its settings from Wazimap.

Change your settings.py file to import most settings from Wazimap, and then override the settings that you want to change. Replace the contents of your file with the following:
```
# pull in the default wazimap settings
from wazimap.settings import *  # noqa

# install this app before Wazimap
INSTALLED_APPS = ['wazimap_ex'] + INSTALLED_APPS

# Localise this instance of Wazimap
WAZIMAP['name'] = 'Wazimap Example'
# NB: this must be https if your site supports HTTPS.
WAZIMAP['url'] = 'http://wazimap.example.com'
WAZIMAP['country_code'] = 'EX'
```
See also

See the Configuration section for more details on configuration options.
You’ll need a running PostgreSQL server. The default database settings are:
- Username: wazimap
- Password: wazimap
- Database: wazimap
- Hostname: localhost
So create the user and database locally:
```
createuser -P wazimap
createdb -O wazimap wazimap
```
Or alternatively from inside psql:
```
CREATE USER wazimap WITH PASSWORD 'wazimap';
CREATE DATABASE wazimap OWNER wazimap;
```
Note

If you want to use a different database, configure the default database as you normally would for a Django application.
Run migrations to setup the database:
```
python manage.py migrate
```
Create a superuser to manage your site:
```
python manage.py createsuperuser
```
You now have a Wazimap application and matching database ready to load geographies and data into. Those steps are covered in the rest of this guide.