nice-bytes

A clone of the popular website GoodReads where users can find and rate restaurants.

Live link: https://nice-bytes.herokuapp.com/

Please note: this project is hosted on a Heroku dyno that requires time to spin up. If loading takes long please allow about 30 seconds for the dyno to start.

Local Environment Setup

The following are instructions for setting the project up to run locally on Windows WSL2.

Installing Dependencies

Install Windows WSL2
Install Postgres for Windows and confirm access to Postgres in WSL2 Ubunutu using psql -h localhost -U postgres postgres in bash
Install Node and npm for WSL2 Ubuntu
npm i -g sequelize-cli dotenv-cli on Ubuntu to globally install environment and migration toolsets

Clone Codebase

git clone https://github.com/BenBolthouse/nice-bytes.git to clone this repo to a new directory "nice-bytes"
cd nice-bytes to navigate to the project root
git checkout development to setup a tracking branch for remote "origin/development"
git checkout development-mvp-0 to setup a tracking branch for the first MVP feature branch

IMPORTANT: Do NOT do any development work in main branch!! Do NOT push changes to main! Always do your work in a branch off of development, such as development-mvp-###.

NOTE: If you would like to do experimental work on a branch off of a development branch, do git checkout -b local-[branch_name]. You can merge your changes into an MVP from a local, but be careful not to push a local branch up to origin. Locals will be discarded in the remote repository.

NPM and Database Setup

npm i in project root to install node_modules
Create a new database user "nicebytes_app" with a password of your choosing; grant CREATEDB to "nicebytes_app"
Copy ./.env.example to ./.env and update with your Postgres user information
npx dotenv sequelize db:create in project root to create the database with the Postgres user
npm run dev to check to see if the Postgres connection is successful; should show "running on port... [port]" in your Ubuntu bash

At this point you should be able to use code . in bash in the project root to open VS Code.

VS Code Debugger for Nodemon

Our skeleton project has an NPM script npm start:development for the development server. However, if you'd like a breakpoint debugger for the project (highly recommend!!) then follow these steps:

In the project root create a file ./.vscode/launch.json; you may need to create the directory
In launch.json copy and paste the following launch configuration;

{
  "version": "0.2.0",
  "configurations": [
    {
      "console": "integratedTerminal",
      "internalConsoleOptions": "neverOpen",
      "name": "Nodemon",
      "program": "${workspaceFolder}/bin/www",
      "request": "launch",
      "restart": true,
      "runtimeExecutable": "nodemon",
      "runtimeArgs": ["-r", "dotenv/config"],
      "skipFiles": ["<node_internals>/**"],
      "type": "pwa-node"
    }
  ]
}

Confirm that the debugger works by selecting a breakpoint in the application and then run the debugger "Nodemon"; the application should pause at the breakpoint

MVP Branching Strategy

All work will be done in the current MVP development branch. Current MVP at the time of writing this is MVP-0, so the branch we'll be pushing to is development-mvp-0. We'll do pull requests into main when we move on to new MVP versions.