The Dashboard is the bundled, web-based IDE for py4web. You will use it extensively to manage applications and inspect databases. Browsing its interface is also a good way to get a feel for py4web and its components.
When you start py4web, it launches a web server that listens on http://127.0.0.1:8000 — that is, TCP port 8000 on your local machine, over plain HTTP.
By default this address is reachable only from the local machine. Open it in a browser like Firefox or Google Chrome:
The buttons are:
- Dashboard (http://127.0.0.1:8000/_dashboard), which we'll describe in this chapter.
- Documentation (http://127.0.0.1:8000/_documentation?version=1.20201112.1), for browsing the local copy of this Manual.
- Source (https://github.com/web2py/py4web), pointing to the GitHub repository.
- Discuss (https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/py4web), pointing to the Google mail group.
Click the Dashboard button to reach the Dashboard login. Enter the
password you set up earlier (see :ref:`set_password command option`).
If you don't remember it, stop py4web with Ctrl-C, set a new
password, and start py4web again.
After you enter the correct dashboard password, the dashboard appears with all of its tabs collapsed.
Click on a tab title to expand. Tabs are context dependent. For example, open tab “Installed Applications” and click on an installed application to select it.
This will create new tabs “Routes”, “Files”, and “Model” for the selected app.
The “Files” tab lets you browse the folder that contains the selected
app and edit any file in it. By default, edits are picked up
automatically the next time the app is requested. If you launched
py4web with a different --watch setting (see
:ref:`run command option`), click “Reload Apps” under “Installed
Applications” for changes to take effect.
If an app fails to load, its button turns red. Click it to see the
underlying error.
The Dashboard exposes every app's database through PyDAL's REST API and provides a web interface for searching and performing CRUD operations against those databases.
If a user visits an app and triggers a bug, the user is issued a ticket.
The ticket is recorded in the py4web service database. The dashboard shows the most common recent issues and lets you search through tickets.
