About

Signatories is a simple web-based program that allows a person to sign an online petition, a declaration, a statement, or any form of communication that requires community support. Designed for academics, signing is accomplished by authenticating with an account at ORCID.

Campaigns can choose to allow for anonymous signatures or not. Signatories to a campaign may choose to add their professional affiliation, and they can modify their preferences or remove their signature after signing. When the signatory's name is visible, any user may click on it to inspect their ORCID profile.

By requiring an account at ORCID to sign, not only are bogus signatures avoided, but this helps to limit participants to the academic community. An ORCID account may sign at most once, and anonymous participants are assured to have an ORCID account.

Administrators can assign users as editors. Editors can create campaigns, or modify, delete or close those for which they are the owner.

This code is based on the Planetary Research Reviewer expertise database, which is in turn based on the Seismica reviewer expertise database that was created originally by Martijn van den Ende.

Dependencies

conda create -n signatories python=3.13 python-dotenv flask flask-sqlalchemy sqlalchemy-utils orcid waitress -c conda-forge

Instructions

Initial setup

When running in production, place the project files in an appropriate directory such as /var/www/signatories. For testing, any directory will do.

Copy the file .env.sample to .env, which should look like the following:

cookie_secret = '...'  # Random string to cross-check the stored cookie. Any string will do.
port = 3000  # port used by the web server when in sandbox mode

# Orcid ID of the site admin that is added to the database at creation
admin_orcid = 'xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx'

# If everyone_is_editor is False, admins must add editors to database manually.
# Otherwise, everyone with an ORCID account is an editor.
everyone_is_editor = False

# Set favicon (use "" for none). File name is with respect to static/img
favicon = "favicon.ico"

# Default text for header
action_name = "Signatories"
action_short_description = "Open source signing of statements and petitions"
action_path = "/"

# Default main text
action_kind = "Introduction"

# URL and name of a link displayed in the website footer, such as the association website
footer_url_name = "My-Organization"
footer_url = "https://my-organization.example.org/"

# Show the two example petitions
show_examples = True

# Add a statement in the footer that states Signatories was created by the Planetary Research Cooperative
thank_prc = False

# Contact email in the footer
contact_email = "[email protected]"

# ORCID API credentials
client_ID = 'APP-ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP'
client_secret = 'xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx'

# If the ORCID client credentials correspond to a member account, set to 1
orcid_member = 0

# Uncomment and provide a public URL when used in production. When public_domain
# is not set, the app will use the ORCID sandbox API.
# public_domain = 'https://signatories.example.org'

Then modify the following variables:

1. cookie_secret: a random string to cross-check the stored cookie. Any string will do.
2. client_ID, client_secret: ORCID API credentials.

For testing, register for a sandbox ORCID API using a dummy email address. When the API is enabled, go to ORCID profile > developer tools and create a client ID and secret. In production use the main ORCID API credentials.

3. Add a public domain if the application is used in production (not required for local development in sandbox mode).
4. Update the parameters favicon, footer_url_name, footer_url, thank_prc, and contact_email.

Finally, to run the app, use:

python app.py

System service

To have the application start automatically when the system reboots, create a file /etc/systemd/system/signatories.service with the following contents:

[Unit]
Description=Signatories daemon
After=multi-user.target

[Service]
ExecStart=/opt/miniforge3/envs/signatories/bin/python /var/www/signatories/app.py &
Type=simple
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

and then run the following at the command line

systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl enable signatories
service signatories start

Reverse proxy

Running the application will enable an http web server on port 3000. To use this securely with an apache web server, it will be necessary to create a reverse proxy. First, create the file /etc/apache2/sites-available/signatories.conf with the following:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName signatories.example.org
    Redirect / https://signatories.example.org
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:443>
    ServerName signatories.example.org
    ProxyPass / http://127.0.0.1:3000/
    ProxyPassReverse / http://127.0.0.1:3000/
    ProxyRequests Off
</VirtualHost>

<Directory /var/www/signatories>
    Options +FollowSymLinks
    Options -Indexes
    AllowOverride All
    order allow,deny
    allow from all
</Directory>

Then execute the following commands:

a2enmod proxy
a2enmod proxy_http
systemctl restart apache2
a2ensite signatories.conf

Notes

• The database is by default located at db/signatories.db.
• If you change from sandbox to production modes (by setting public_domain), you should re-initialize the database. Otherwise sandbox accounts will appear in the production database.