Frontend

Frontend renders the citizen-facing part of formats stored in the Content Store, and some hard-coded routes including the GOV.UK homepage.

Live examples

Formats

Simple smart answer

• https://www.gov.uk/sold-bought-vehicle
• https://www.gov.uk/contact-the-dvla

Transaction start pages:

• https://www.gov.uk/register-to-vote
• https://www.gov.uk/vehicle-tax
• https://www.gov.uk/find-a-job

Help

• https://www.gov.uk/help/browsers

Hard-coded routes

• https://www.gov.uk/ (homepage)
• https://www.gov.uk/help (help index page)
• https://www.gov.uk/help/cookies
• https://www.gov.uk/help/ab-testing
• https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice (travel advice index page)
• https://www.gov.uk/find-local-council
• https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/placeholder (asset placeholder while attachments are virus-checked)
• https://www.gov.uk/roadmap (GOV.UK public facing roadmap)
• https://www.gov.uk/contact-electoral-registration-office (elections API)

Licence finders

• https://www.gov.uk/find-licences/premises-licence
• https://www.gov.uk/find-licences/temporary-events-notice
• https://www.gov.uk/find-licences/apply-skip-permit
• https://www.gov.uk/find-licences/street-collection-licence
• https://www.gov.uk/find-licences/zoo-licence
• https://www.gov.uk/find-licences/premises-licence-scotland
• https://www.gov.uk/find-licences/house-to-house-collection-licence
• https://www.gov.uk/find-licences/public-charitable-collection-permit-scotland
• https://www.gov.uk/find-licences/late-hours-catering-licence-scotland
• https://www.gov.uk/find-licences/food-business-registration
• https://www.gov.uk/find-licences/cooling-tower-notification
• https://www.gov.uk/find-licences/performing-animals-registration

Calendars

• https://www.gov.uk/bank-holidays
• https://www.gov.uk/when-do-the-clocks-change

Take Part

• https://www.gov.uk/government/get-involved/take-part/improve-your-social-housing

Misc

Nomenclature

• format: our phrase for a type of content
• scope: each type of calendar (eg daylight saving, bank holidays) is known as a scope. A scope has its own view templates, JSON data source and primary route.

Technical documentation

Frontend is a Ruby on Rails application and should follow our Rails app conventions.

See the CONTRIBUTING guide for more information.

Dependencies

• alphagov/static - provides shared templates, styles, and JavaScript
• alphagov/content-store - provides raw data for rendering formats
• alphagov/locations-api - provides postcode lookups
• alphagov/places-manager - provides places lookups (e.g. for find-my-nearest)
• alphagov/publishing-api - this app sends data to the content-store

Running the application

You can use the GOV.UK Docker environment or the local startup.sh script to run the app. Read the guidance on local frontend development to find out more about each approach, before you get started.

If you are using GOV.UK Docker, remember to combine it with the commands that follow. See the GOV.UK Docker usage instructions for examples.

If you are using the startup.sh script, first run static and execute the following command:

PLEK_SERVICE_STATIC_URI=http://static.dev.gov.uk ./startup.sh --live

which uses a local copy of static and content from production.

Note that you will have to have GOV.UK Locations API running locally. A valid dataset will have to be loaded for Locations API or postcode lookups will not succeed. This is part of the standard GOV.UK data replication steps.

Running the test suite

bundle exec rake

Further documentation

• Calendars
• Elections

Licence

MIT Licence