Frontend

The Guardian website frontend.

New developers quick-start

Frontend is a set of Play Framework 2 Scala applications.

Requirements

A Mac or Linux pc
Installed Node.js (https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/Installing-Node.js-via-package-manager)
Installed npm (Node package manager - you quite possibly already have this) sudo apt-get install npm
Installed GraphicsMagick
Installed Grunt (build tool) sudo npm -g install grunt-cli
Installed Ruby >= v1.9.x & bundler (You will already have this installed, but run ruby -v to check version number)

File handles

On Linux machines you may run into a "too many files open" error during compilation or reloading. You can find out how many file handles you are allowed per process by running ulimit -n. This can be quite low, e.g. 1024

To increase the limit do the following (instructions from Ubuntu 12.10)...

In the file /etc/security/limits.conf add the following two lines

*  soft  nofile 20000
*  hard  nofile 65000

And in the file /etc/pam.d/common-session add the following line.

session required pam_limits.so

restart the machine.

For more info see http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-increase-the-maximum-number-of-open-files/

Configuration

You'll need a config file called /etc/gu/install_vars with the following content :-

STAGE=DEV
INT_SERVICE_DOMAIN=gudev.gnl
EXT_SERVICE_DOMAIN=

And one called ~/.gu/frontend.properties, ( alternatively /gu/etc/frontend.properties ) with the following content :-

content.api.key=XXXX
content.api.host=http://XXXX
pa.api.key=XXXX

Get the correct key and host from another developer on the project (or for external developers, sign up for a key at http://guardian.mashery.com).

To set up a proxy

export proxy_host=proxy.somewhere.com
export proxy_port=1234

Running

Assuming you have checked out this project, open a console and change directory into the root of the project.

Start Simple Build Tool (sbt) by running ./sbt012 --no-proxy

Once sbt is running (it may take a while first time) then compile the project by typing compile (also can take a while first time)

Switch project by typing project dev-build

Now start the local server by typing run (this too will take long the first time)

Now test you are up and running by hitting the following URLs:

To use in Eclipse, use the eclipsify command. This will create Eclipse project and settings files which can be imported using the Import Existing Project options in Eclipse.

To use in IntelliJ, see https://github.com/mpeltonen/sbt-idea

Further information on using the Play console is available here.

Virtualisation

Virtualisation provides for robust development environments and a controlled system dependency solution. See the instructions in README.vagrant.md for using Vagrant virtualisation with this project.

Endpoints

The available endpoints are listed in conf/routes of each application and typically include:

/management: Operations support as per standard webapp guidelines. See guardian-management.
/pages/<path>: Serve the Guardian URL at <path> if supported by this application.
/assets/<file>: A convenience for DEV machines. Assets are CDNed in PROD and would not be available on DEV.
/<path>: A synonym for /pages/<path> as a convenience for DEV machines.

Deploying

Deployment uses the Magenta library.

No Proxy Build

Invoke sbt012 with a --no-proxy parameter to directly download artifacts.

Additional Documentation

Further documentation notes and useful items can be found in dev.

erwink/frontend