Uninett/Argus-frontend

Front-end application to the Argus alert aggregator backend

Argus - Frontend

The Argus-frontend provides a graphical web interface to use with Argus. It has been built using React with TypeScript. The backend can be found at https://github.com/Uninett/Argus.

Here's how to get started with development.

Requirements

• Argus backend
• Node.js with npm

Set up the Argus backend according to the instructions in its repository (https://github.com/Uninett/Argus).

Furthermore, Node.js is required. We also use the Node Package Manager (npm), which comes bundled with Node.js.

Optionally, you can forego a full installation of Node.js and npm on your local system, and instead opt to run a complete Argus setup using Docker Compose. If so, skip directly to the Install and startup section.

Installation procedures are as follows:

Install Node.js

OS X

Use the Terminal app (located at /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app).

Install Homebrew with the following command.

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/go/install)"

Then run

brew install node

to start the installation.

Ubuntu Linux

Open a terminal and run the following commands:

sudo apt-get install python-software-properties
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:chris-lea/node.js
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nodejs

Windows

Download the Node.js installer from http://nodejs.org/ and follow the installation instructions provided on the website. Make sure that the git command is available in your PATH.

---

After installation, test your Node.js with the following commands:

$ node --version
v10.11.0

$ npm --version
6.4.1

You successfully installed Node.js! Now let's continue to Argus frontend.

Install and startup Argus frontend

To download Argus frontend and install all required dependencies, run

git clone https://github.com/Uninett/Argus-frontend
cd Argus-frontend
npm install

Afterwards, use

npm start

to start the app in development mode. This will open your browser at http://localhost:3000 or similar.

Congrats, you now have the Argus frontend up and running!

Note that the website will automatically reload as you edit the code.

Configuration

Default configuration options for the Argus frontend are located in src/config.tsx. All of these options can be set using environment variables when running the frontend under the Node server (or in Docker Compose), or by providing configuration variables in runtime-config.json file.

Configuration variables can be provided by adding a public/runtime-config.json file when in development environment, or by serving a /runtime-config.json file when in production environment. Example configuration file looks like this:

{
  "backendUrl": "http://localhost:8000",
  "enableWebsocketSupport": true,
  "backendWSUrl": "ws://localhost:8000/ws",
  "useSecureCookie": true,
  "debug": true,
  "cookieDomain": "localhost",
  "defaultAutoRefreshInterval": 40,
  "realtimeServiceMaxRetries": 7,
  "use24hTime": true,
  "timestampDateFormat": "yyyy-MM-dd",
  "timestampTimeFormat": "HH:mm:ss",
  "timestampTimeNoSeconds": "HH:mm",
  "timestampTimezoneOffsetFormat": "xxx",
  "timestampFormat": "{date} {time}{timezone_offset}",
  "showSeverityLevels": true
}

Development environment

Either provide environment variables when running the frontend under the Node server (or in Docker Compose), or add runtime-config.json file with the configuration variables to the /public folder.

Production environment

Serve runtime-config.json file with the configuration variables. It must be accessible as %YOUR_FRONTEND_BASE_URL%/runtime-config.json.

Alternatively, you can configure the application via environment variables if using the production-oriented Docker image defined in ./docker/Dockerfile. This image will automatically produce a runtime-config.json from the environment variables exported to the container, as well as other variables provided in the ./docker/runtime-config-template.json. Read more in the docker/README.md.

Variables

These environment variables are available:

REACT_APP_BACKEND_URL

The base URL to the Argus API server

REACT_APP_ENABLE_WEBSOCKETS_SUPPORT

Set to true to enable subscriptions to realtime incident updates

REACT_APP_BACKEND_WS_URL

If you enable websocket support, this must be set to the backend's websocket URL. This value may depend on whether your deployment splits the HTTP server and the Web Socket servers into two components. Typically, if the backend HTTP server is https://argus-api.example.org/, this value could be wss://argus-api.example.org/ws.

REACT_APP_USE_SECURE_COOKIE

Set explicitly to false to disable the use of secure cookies. Typically only useful when deploying the development environment using non-TLS servers/regular HTTP.

REACT_APP_DEBUG

Set to true if you want debug output from the application.

REACT_APP_DEFAULT_AUTO_REFRESH_INTERVAL

Set to the default number of seconds between each auto refresh

These environment variables are optional:

REACT_APP_COOKIE_DOMAIN

Ignore it if Argus frontend and backend are deployed on the same domain. Otherwise, set it to the same value as ARGUS_COOKIE_DOMAIN variable on the backend.

Configuration variables can be provided in runtime-config.json file and will take precedence over the environment variables. These configuration variables are available:

backendUrl

Format: string. The base URL to the Argus API server. MUST be provided in production environment, optional otherwise.

cookieDomain

Format: string. MUST be provided in production environment, optional otherwise.

enableWebsocketSupport

Format: boolean. Set to true to enable subscriptions to realtime incident updates.

backendWSUrl

Format: string. If you enable websocket support, this must be set to the backend's websocket URL. This value may depend on whether your deployment splits the HTTP server and the Web Socket servers into two components. Typically, if the backend HTTP server is https://argus-api.example.org/, this value could be wss://argus-api.example.org/ws.

realtimeServiceMaxRetries

Format: integer. If you enable websocket support, and it fails, this specifies how many times the application will retry connection before closing the socket.

defaultAutoRefreshInterval

Format: integer. Set to the default number of seconds between each auto refresh.

debug

Format: boolean. Set to true if you want debug output from the application.

showSeverityLevels/dt>

Format: boolean. Set to true if you want to enable filtering of incidents by severity levels.

useSecureCookie

Format: boolean. Set explicitly to false to disable the use of secure cookies. Typically only useful when deploying the development environment using non-TLS servers/regular HTTP.

timestampFormat

Format: string (valid ISO timestamp format). Specifies how a complete timestamp should be displayed.

timestampDateFormat

Format: string (valid ISO timestamp format). Specifies how dates should be displayed.

timestampTimeFormat

Format: string (valid ISO timestamp format). Specifies how time values should be displayed.

timestampTimeNoSeconds

Format: string (valid ISO timestamp format). Specifies how time values without seconds should be displayed.

timestampTimezoneOffsetFormat

Format: string (valid ISO timestamp format). Specifies how timezone should be displayed.

use24hTime

Format: boolean. Set to true if you want time values to be displayed in 24-hours-day format.

Using Docker Compose

This repository contains a docker-compose.yml definition to run all the backend components as services, while the Argus frontend runs directly off the checked out source code using npm. If you have Docker Compose on your system, run these commands to get everything up and running:

export UID
docker-compose up

(the export UID step is to ensure the Argus frontend container runs using your system UID, so it doesn't produce root-owned files in the mounted source code directory).

Your Argus frontend should now be served on http://localhost:8080, while your Argus API server should be served on http://localhost:8000. As with running npm locally, the website should automatically reload as you edit the code.

The default setup will install the latest version of the Argus API server from the master branch. If you need to customize which tag or branch to install, you can change the BRANCH argument in docker-compose.yml (or preferably implement your own docker-compose.override.yml).

Running tests

Given that Argus-frontend is installed and configured as described above, the following command can be used to run all the tests:

npm test

To run test files individually the following command can be used:

npm test -- nameOfTestFile

To run a single test and skip all the others, the following command can be used:

npm test -- -t "testName"

Fixes for known annoyances, Linux

If you get the error message "React Native Error: ENOSPC: System limit for number of file watchers reached" (the code will still run, but tests might not), your version of React is probably not cleaning up its inotify watchers properly.

A temporary fix that always works is to reset the node_modules directory:

rm -rf node_modules
npm install

.. but the error will eventually be back.

A permanent fix for some Linuxes is to increase the value of fs.inotify.max_user_watches in /etc/sysctl.conf. It's a number that is divisible by 540 on 32bit systems and 1024 on 64bit-systems. The max is 524288.

Coding guidelines

Code structure

The folder structure of this project consists of components and views. Each view component consists of other components. App.js handles the routing to each view component that is displayed on the web app.

Coding style

We use prettier for JavaScript auto-formatting.

We recommend using an editor plugin to automatically format code on save, like prettier-atom or vim-prettier.

Another option to format the code is the yarn prettier command.

Lint errors will be displayed on the console while the app is running.

CSS

The file ColorScheme.css defines the colors used in the project. Additionally, there is one CSS file for each component.

Using towncrier to automatically produce the changelog

To install towncrier using pip run

$ pip install towncrier

Alternatively you can also use pipx and run

$ pipx install towncrier

Or for Ubuntu 22.04 LTS or later run

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install towncrier

If it is not possible to install towncrier in the desired environment the files needed to later automatically generate the changelog from can also be created using the editor of one's choice as long as the naming conventions are followed.

Before merging a pull request

To be able to automatically produce the changelog for a release one file for each pull request (also called news fragment) needs to be added to the folder changelog.d/.

The name of the file consists of three parts separated by a period:

1. The identifier: either the issue number (in case the pull request fixes that issue) or the pull request number. If we don't want to add a link to the resulting changelog entry then a + followed by a unique short description.
2. The type of the change: we use security, removed, deprecated, added, changed and fixed.
3. The file suffix, e.g. .md, towncrier does not care which suffix a fragment has.

So an example for a file name related to an issue/pull request would be 214.added.md or for a file without corresponding issue +fixed-pagination-bug.fixed.md.

This file can either be created manually with a file name as specified above and the changelog text as content or one can use towncrier to create such a file as following:

$ towncrier create -c "Changelog content" 214.added.md

When opening a pull request there will be a check to make sure that a news fragment is added and it will fail if it is missing.

Before a release

To add all content from the changelog.d/ folder to the changelog file simply run

$ towncrier build --version {version}

This will also delete all files in changelog.d/.

To preview what the addition to the changelog file would look like add the flag --draft. This will not delete any files or change CHANGELOG.md. It will only output the preview in the terminal.

A few other helpful flags:

• date DATE - set the date of the release, default is today
• keep - do not delete the files in changelog.d/

More information about towncrier.