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README.md

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+##GMU Laundry##
+
+A site that scrapes http://gmu.esuds.net and creates a pretty graph of the
+current machine usage data for each hall.
+
+This used to be part of my personalsite project (which is a django site), but I
+decided to make this it's own website.
+
+##Getting Started##
+
+* Git clone the repo: `git clone https://github.com/thallada/laundry`
+* Set-up a database. Create a `secrets.py` file in the `laundry/` folder
+  with the following variables set:
+  * SECRET_KEY
+  * DATABASE_NAME
+  * DATABASE_USER
+  * DATABASE_PASSWORD
+  * DATABASE_HOST
+* Modify the `ADMINS` variable in `settings.py` so you get emails when the site
+  errors (happens when eSuds changes something on their site).
+* Run syncdb: `python manage.py syncdb`
+* Import the GMU Laundry Hall data: `python manage.py loaddata laundry.json`
+* Run the server: `python manage.py runserver`
+
+##Errors##
+
+Whoever is in the `ADMINS` variable in `settings.py` will get an e-mail whenever
+an error on the site occurs. This most likely happens when eSuds changes
+something on their site that breaks the webscraper (which is in `laundry.py`).
+
+The most often change is that machines are added or removed from halls on the
+eSuds website. To fix this issue you will need to manually modify the database
+entry for the hall in the django shell. For example, adding a washer to
+Whitetop Hall:
+
+`python manage.py shell`
+
+```python
+>>> from laundry_app.models import Hall, LaundryMachine
+>>> whitetop = Hall.objects.get(name="Whitetop")
+>>> LaundryMachine.objects.create(number=10, type=LaundryMachine.WASHER, hall=whitetop)
+```
+
+The number is from the eSuds site in the chart for the hall (under the
+"Washer #" column).
+
+Sometimes errors happen when eSuds goes down too. Nothing we can really do about
+that, but perhaps we can improve our downtime by caching previous results and
+showing those in the intrim.
+
+##Todo##
+
+Move away from Django to Javascript. There's no real reason to have a backend
+for this site. It can just query esuds and make a chart in D3 or something.
+Django is a lot of overhead for such a small site.
+
+Add weekly usage stats. I was in the process of writing this but never finished.
+It's a lot more complicated than the current usage stats because a record of
+historical queries needs to be kept somehow.
+
+Host this on a SRCT server. Right now it's somewhere that I probably only have
+control over and with a database at MIT that I might loose access to eventually.
+
+Make the site more reliable to eSuds changing, like machines getting added or
+removed from halls.