Developing Locally

Prerequisites

NodeJS latest - install

postgres - install

typescript - use "npm install typescript"

knex - use "npm install knex"

ejs - use "npm install ejs"

Optional

Docker Desktop - install

Environment

For an example of required server environment variables, see server/.env.example

For an example of required client environment variables, see client/.env.example

Database

This project uses a postgres database. You must use the environment variable DATABASE_URL in the server to point the app to your postgres instance. DATABASE_URL should be a database URI. See the "Connection URIs" section of the postgres docs for details.

The project also contains a docker-compose definition for a postgres instance exposed on port 5433. To use this definition you must set the following environment variables in the project root:

POSTGRES_USER
POSTGRES_PASSWORD
POSTGRES_DB

The docker definition will automatically configure the database to use these values.

To build and start the postgres container from the project root, run the following commands:

docker-compose build db
docker-compose up -d db

Once you have a dedicated postgres instance, and you have configured your environment, run the following commands from the project root in order to migrate the database:

npm run build:server
npm run knex:migrate:latest

Client

The client/frontend consists of a React app. To start the app in with hot reloads from the project root, run the following commands:

cd client
npm run start:dev

To test the app, start the server and then go to http://localhost:3001/app. The development environment has a mock-up authentication with test users, whose credentials can be found in server/src/data/devUsers.json.

Server

The server/backend consists of an Express server with a GraphQL API.

To run the server in development mode with hot reloads run the following commands from the project root:

npm run start:dev

Debugging

The start:debug script in the root project can be used to start the server in debug mode. This will expose a debug listener on port 9229. Follow this tutorial for debugging using this process. We have found that Chrome dev tools are the most effective for this purpose.