HERA Backend — Admin Panel & Web Service

Django + Django REST Framework API and admin panel for HERA. Runs locally with Docker Compose (PostgreSQL + the web service). The HERA mobile app talks to this API.

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Run locally

Prerequisites

• Docker Desktop (with the WSL2 backend on Windows). Verify with docker run hello-world.

1. Create web/hera/secrets.py

The secrets file is not in the repo (gitignored). Django imports it at startup (from .secrets import ...), so without it the server won't boot. Create web/hera/secrets.py:

GOOGLE_MAPS_KEY = ""
SENTRY_SDK_DSN = ""
STATIC_TOKEN = ""
GLOBAL_OTP_AUTH = "000000"   # local OTP bypass — see "Sign in locally" below
CLOUDFLARE_TURNSTILE_SECRET = ""
CLOUDFLARE_BYPASS_TOKEN = ""
TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID = "AC00000000000000000000000000000000"   # format-valid dummy
TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN = "00000000000000000000000000000000"
TWILIO_MESSAGING_SERVICE_SID = ""
ONESIGNAL_ID = "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000"
ONESIGNAL_KEY = ""
MESSAGEBIRD_API_KEY = ""
OPENAI_API_KEY = ""
DO_BYPASS = ""

Empty / dummy values let the server boot and serve the core API locally. The third-party integrations (SMS via Twilio/MessageBird, Cloudflare captcha, OneSignal push, OpenAI, Google Maps/Translate, Sentry) stay inert until you add real keys. (Twilio's client needs a non-empty AC…-prefixed SID or its constructor fails — hence the dummy above.)

2. Remove the missing hotline_ai_chatbot references

⚠️ Known repo issue: web/hera/settings.py lists "hotline_ai_chatbot" in INSTALLED_APPS and web/hera/urls.py includes hotline_ai_chatbot.urls, but that app's source was never committed to the public repo. Django fails to boot with ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'hotline_ai_chatbot'. Until it is open-sourced, remove both references:

• web/hera/settings.py → delete "hotline_ai_chatbot", from INSTALLED_APPS.
• web/hera/urls.py → delete the line path('', include('hotline_ai_chatbot.urls')),.

3. Start the services

docker compose up --build

Builds the web image (Python 3.10 + dependencies) and starts PostgreSQL 13 (db) and the web service on http://127.0.0.1:8000. The first build pulls images and installs dependencies (~5 min).

4. Run database migrations

docker compose run --rm web python manage.py migrate

5. Verify

Open http://127.0.0.1:8000/api_docs/redoc/ — the browsable API docs (HERA v2). Endpoints such as http://127.0.0.1:8000/user_profiles/ return 401 without authentication (expected).

The database connection is injected by docker-compose.yml via HERA_DB_SECRET + HERA_DJANGO_SECRET_KEY (Postgres DB hr, user us, password pwd, host db inside the compose network).

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Sign in locally (OTP bypass)

The mobile app signs in via Auth0 passwordless SMS by default, which cannot deliver codes locally. For local testing, set GLOBAL_OTP_AUTH in web/hera/secrets.py to a fixed code (e.g. "000000"); the /otp_auth/attempt_challenge/ endpoint accepts it as a universal master OTP for any valid phone number. After changing secrets.py, restart the web service:

docker compose restart web

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Day-to-day commands

docker compose logs -f web                                # live web logs
docker compose down                                       # stop everything
docker compose up -d                                      # start (no rebuild)
docker compose run --rm web python manage.py <command>    # any Django command
docker compose run --rm web python manage.py createsuperuser

Testing

docker compose run --rm web python manage.py test
docker compose run --rm web python manage.py flush        # wipe all data

(Optional) Connect to the database

The Postgres container exposes port 5432 (DB hr, user us, password pwd):

postgresql://us:pwd@127.0.0.1:5432/hr

Django admin & 2FA

After migrating, create a superuser (docker compose run --rm web python manage.py createsuperuser), then visit account/login/ → enable 2FA → admin/.

Database schema

Deploying

1. Install Docker Desktop (required for AWS Copilot builds).
2. Install the AWS Copilot CLI.
3. Run copilot deploy (choose test vs production-turkey). Make sure you are on the right git branch with the correct settings.py / secrets.py values.