USEP Web Project

This is the code that powers the Brown University U.S. Epigraphy project.

For more information about that project, see that site's 'About' page

Overview

• Framework: Django
• Package manager / command runner: uv
• Main app: usep_app
• Django settings module: config.settings

The site serves:

• collection list and collection detail pages
• inscription pages
• publications pages
• search form and search results
• static database-backed pages such as about, contact, links, and texts

Some page content is rendered directly by Django templates. Inscription and publication content also depends on client-side XML/XSL transforms loaded from configured URLs.

Configuration

The app requires a repository-adjacent .env file. config/settings.py loads it at startup and expects environment variables for:

• Django core settings such as debug, admins, allowed hosts, database config, static config, and email
• Solr connection settings
• inscription XML/XSL/SaxonCE URLs
• publication XML/XSL URLs
• a few maintenance URLs used by the app

Common Commands

Install dependencies:

uv sync

Run the Django development server:

uv run ./manage.py runserver 127.0.0.1:8000

Run database migrations:

uv run ./manage.py migrate

Run tests:

uv run ./manage.py test

---