Dial

Requirements

• Python >= 3.10

Installing (Non-developers)

To install intersect-sdk from PyPI:

pip install intersect-sdk

To install Dial from source, git clone this repository and run the following from the root directory (that is, within the neeter-active-learning directory):

pip install .

Alternatively, both intersect-sdk and Dial may be installed with the following:

pip install -e .

Installing (developers)

Install PDM (link) and then run:

pdm install

We use PDM as a dependency manager and intend on using the dependencies listed in pdm.lock in a production environment.

We use ruff to lint/format; if using the PDM workflow, pre-commit will automatically fail the commit if there are linting/formatting errors.

To format:

ruff format

To run linter and automatically fix errors:

ruff check --fix

running infrastructure locally

You can use docker compose up -d -f docker-compose-dev.yml or to automatically spin up both a broker instance and a database instance locally.

If you also want to run DIAL inside the container, you can instead run docker compose up -d

To remove the infrastructure containers: docker compose down -v; leave off the -v flag if you would like to persist the DB data.

Running

To run the service: python scripts/launch_service.py

In a separate terminal, you can run one of the following clients:

• Automatic: python scripts/automated_client.py
• Manual: python scripts/manual_client.py

CLI arg --config or environment variable DIAL_CONFIG_FILE should be a path to a valid JSON configuration. If neither value is set, it will default to local-conf.json .

• local-conf.json - If you set up the infrastructure locally via docker compose up, use this config file.
• local-conf-docker.json - This config file should only be used if you are running DIAL in the Docker image as well.

Docker

To build:

docker build -t dial-image .

To run the service:

docker run --rm -it dial-image -e DIAL_CONFIG_FILE=/app/config.json -v path-to-your-config.json:/app/config.json python scripts/launch_service.py

To run the client, select one of the following:

• Automatic run: docker run --rm -it -e DIAL_CONFIG_FILE=/app/config.json -v path-to-your-config.json:/app/config.json dial-image python scripts/automated_client.py
• Manual run: docker run --rm -it -e DIAL_CONFIG_FILE=/app/config.json -v path-to-your-config.json:/app/config.json dial-image python scripts/manual_client.py

Kubernetes Deployment (Helm)

A Helm chart is available for deploying Dial to Kubernetes with MongoDB database support. The chart includes:

• Dial service deployment
• MongoDB subchart from bitnami

Quick Start

cd charts/dial
helm dependency update
helm install dial . -n dial --create-namespace

For detailed Helm chart documentation, see:

• charts/dial/README.md - Comprehensive Helm documentation

Common Helm Commands

With custom INTERSECT configuration:

helm install dial . -n dial --create-namespace -f values.yaml -f values.config.yaml

With NodePort service:

helm install dial . -n dial --create-namespace -f values.yaml -f values.nodePort.yaml

With external MongoDB:

helm install dial . -n dial --create-namespace \
  --set mongodb.enabled=false \
  --set externalMongoDB.connectionString="mongodb://user:pass@host:27017/dial"

Testing

You will need pytest installed to run the tests, it should be automatically included in your virtual environment if using the PDM workflow.

pdm run test-all