ScriptShifter

REST API service to convert non-Latin scripts to Latin, and vice versa.

View supported scripts.

Environment variables

The provided example.env can be renamed to .env in your deployment and/or moved to a location that is not under version control, and adjusted to fit the environment. The file will be parsed directly by the application if present, or it can be pre-loaded in a Docker environment.

Currently, the following environment variables are defined:

• TXL_LOGLEVEL: Application log level. Defaults to WARN.
• TXL_FLASK_SECRET: Flask secret key.
• TXL_DICTA_EP: Endpoint for the Dicta Hebrew transliteration service. This is mandatory for using the Hebrew module.

Initial setup

In order to run Scriptshifter, a local SQLite database must be created. The simplest way to do that is via command-line:

./sscli admin init-db

This step is already included in the entrypoint.sh script that gets executed by Docker, so no additional action is necessary.

Note that the DB must be recreated every time any of the configuration tables in scriptshifter/tables/data changes.

Local development server

For local development, it is easiest to run Flask without the WSGI wrapper, possibly in a virtual environment:

# python -m venv /path/to/venv
# source /path/to/venv/bin/activate
# pip install -r requirements.txt
# flask run

It is advised to set FLASK_DEBUG=true to reload the web app on code changes and print detailed stack traces when exceptions are raised. Note that changes to any .yml file do NOT trigger a reload of Flask.

Alternatively, the transliteration interface can be accessed directly from Python:

from scriptshifter.trans import transliterate

transliterate("some text", "some language")

Run on Docker

Build container in current dir:

docker build -t scriptshifter:latest .

Start container:

docker run --env-file .env -p 8000:8000 scriptshifter:latest

For running in development mode, add -e FLASK_ENV=development to the options.

Environment variables

The following environment variables are available for modification:

TXL_EMAIL_FROM: Email address sending the feedback form on behalf of users.

TXL_EMAIL_TO: Recipients of the feedback form.

TXL_FLASK_SECRET: Seed for web server security. Set to a random-generated string in a production environment.

TXL_LOGLEVEL: Logging level. Use Python notation. The default is WARN.

TXL_SMTP_HOST: SMTP host to send feedback messages through.

TXL_SMTP_PORT: Port of the SMTP server. Defaults to 1025.

TXL_FEEDBACK_PATH: if a SMTP server is not available, the feedback message may be written to a file under this given path for further processing. The file will have a random name and a .txt suffix. This option is only available if TXL_SMTP_HOST is not defined. If neither TXL_SMTP_HOST nor TXL_FEEDBACK_PATH is defined, the feedback form will not be shown in the UI and a POST request to the /feedback REST endpoint will result in a 501 Not Implemented error.

Web UI

/ renders a simple HTML form to test the transliteration service.

Adding a language as a value of the lang URL parameter, the UI will start with that language selected. E.g. /?lang=chinese will select Chinese from the drop-down automatically. The value must be one of the keys found in /languages.

Command-line interface

Various Scriptshifter commands can be accessed via the shell command sscli. At the moment only a few essential admin and testing tools are available. More commands can be made avaliable on an as-needed basis.

Help menu:

/path/to/sscli --help

Section help:

/path/to/sscli admin --help

Contributing

See the contributing guide.

Further documentation

See the doc folder for additional documentation.