App server for the Bicycle Touring Companion

The server for the bicycle touring companion handles user interactions that must be handled online. Right now, the server lets users log in and publish alerts and services. While users may replicate changes from the master database to their devices, they cannot write back to the database directly. Changes must be published to the server so we can validate what goes into the official record. The server is a Node.js application that runs the Express.js server-side framework. It runs in a Windows Server 2012 cloud instance on AWS.

Developing Locally

Install CouchDB
Run CouchDB
it should give you an option to automatically start on windows
on linux, depending on your install, this may be the following command sudo -u couchdb /usr/bin/couchdb
this may generate errors, but couchdb should still be running
npm install && npm start to get a server loaded on localhost:8080
go to localhost:5984/_utils/ where CouchDB should be running (if you selected to launch it after install)
go to the bottom right where a small dialogue box mentions that everyone is an admin. Make sure to change this before (click the "fix this" link) and follow those steps.
Look at the apiary (apiary.apib) for more information.
You can use postman to make the requests at localhost:8080

Running tests locally

To run tests on you machine, it is recommended that you set the node environment to be set to test. This can be done by running the following in windows:

set NODE_ENV=test

or if you are running linux, by running:

export NODE_ENV=test

Sending Emails

One of the things you can do with btc-app-server is send emails upon registering a new user! To have the email send, you will need to set the configuration as it is labeled in config/custom-environment.yml.

Any of the configurations in there can be changed. Simply set your environment variables on your local machine to what you want them to be. For example, to send emails on a windows device, you would run set SERVER_SEND_MAIL=true.

Images not loading in email

If you are developing locally, it could be the case that your images will get redirected and loaded through a proxy after being cached. If when testing the emails being sent, they do not appear to load correctly, try an email server that does not use a proxy (e.g. https://mailinator.com/).

Updating the AWS Server