Okta Developer Blog

This is the source code repository for Okta's developer blog.

If you're having problems running one of the tutorials for a blog post, please open an issue in this project or leave a comment on the blog post.
If you have questions or need help with Okta's APIs or SDKs, please post to StackOverflow. If you think you've encountered a bug in one of our SDKs, please create a GitHub issue for that SDK.
If you are looking for Okta's developer documentation, that has moved to @okta/okta-developer-docs.

Contribute

If you'd like to contribute to the blog, please send us a pull request.

This site is built using Jekyll. Blog post updates, bug fixes, and PRs are all welcome! You can create articles using Markdown (it's quite simple).

Requirements

This blog depends on both Ruby and Node currently. It has a number of dependencies.

To begin, fork this repo to your personal GitHub, then clone it:

git clone git@github.com:<your-username>/okta-blog.git

Or, if you have access to push to this repo, you can clone it directly.

git clone git@github.com:oktadeveloper/okta-blog.git

Then, install its dependencies.

gem install bundler
bundle install
npm i

If you have issues with this setup, see setting up your environment or use Docker.

Now you can build and start the site.

npm start

Visit http://localhost:4000 in your browser.

To simplify the running of the blog, you can also use Docker.

How to Create a Pull Request

First, you'll want to create a branch. The name of the branch should contain your post's keywords for readability. For example:

git checkout -b angular-spring-boot

Then, create the Markdown file and images directory for your post.

npm run post create angular-spring-boot

A page for your blog post will be created in _source/_posts. Modify this file to have your blog post's content.

Start and view in your browser.

npm start

Your browser will automatically refresh the page when you make changes.

Please review our Markdown standards for conventions we use in posts.

Docker Instructions

To begin, you should have Docker installed and working.

Then, clone this GitHub repo, or your fork:

git clone git@github.com:oktadeveloper/okta-blog.git

Once you've cloned the repository, change into the okta-blog directory to get started:

cd okta-blog

Build the Docker Image

Next, you'll want to build the Docker image. To do this, run the following command:

docker build . -t okta-blog

There's also a make build command you can use.

What this command does is:

Download a Linux system image
Install Ruby, Node, and all of this project's dependencies

The resulting image will allow you to quickly and easily run the blog on your laptop without needing all of the blog dependencies installed. Nice, right?

NOTE: If you modify any of the blog software's dependencies (the Node or Ruby dependencies, specifically), you'll need to re-run that docker build . -t okta-blog command from before. This way you'll re-create the Docker image with all the updated dependencies installed!

Run the Blog

Now that you've got the Docker image setup, all you need to do is run the Docker image to start the blog locally.

Here's the command you'll want to run:

docker run -p 4000:4000 -v $PWD:/app -it okta-blog npm start

You can use make develop as a shortcut.

What this command does is:

-p 4000:4000 - This maps port 4000 from the Docker container to port 4000 on your computer's localhost. This way you can easily access the blog website.
-v $PWD:/app - This mounts the current directory (the okta-blog source code repo) as /app in the Docker container's filesystem. This way, if you change articles or mess with the blog locally, your changes will be picked up by the blog software.
-it - These CLI options just map the Docker container to your current terminal so that when you CTRL+c to exit the blog the Docker container will be killed.
okta-blog - This is telling Docker to run the okta-blog image you created earlier using that docker build command. The -t option you specified earlier when running docker build assigned a name tag to the image so you could easily reference it.
npm start - This is the actual command you're telling Docker to run to launch the blog sofware. Docker will start the container up and then run this command inside the container to launch the Jekyll blog.

After that, all you have to do is open your browser and visit http://localhost:4000 to visit the site!

Markdown Standards

For directories and filenames, surround with back ticks (e.g. filename.txt or /src/component/dummy.file)
For code snippets that are only a few words. Inline back ticks (e.g. Run npm install from the command line)
For button or link names surround with two asterisks (e.g. Then click Done
When adding function names inline, add the parentheses and back ticks (e.g. This calls the render() method)
http://localhost links should be wrapped in back ticks (e.g. http://localhost:3000)
Links that start will developer.okta.com should be relative (e.g. instead of https://developer.okta.com/docs/whatever.html, just use /docs/whatever.html)
Code with {{ variable }} needs a "raw" wrapper. For example:

{% raw %}
```html
<span>{{ title }} app is running!</span>
```
{% endraw %}

For Markdown images, the macro looks as follows:

{% img blog/<post-images-dir>/<image-file-name> alt:"<text for screen readers>" width:"800" %}{: .center-image }

For AsciiDoc:

image::{% asset_path 'blog/post-images-dir>/<image-file-name>' %}[alt=text for screen readers,width=800,align=center]

Utilities

There are a number of scripts available to assist with content creation.

NOTE: If you're using Docker, prefix the commands below with:

docker run -v $PWD:/app -it okta-blog

Create a New Post

npm run post create [post-name] [format] [date]

Creates a new post under _source/_posts with the given name and populates it the file with a blank front matter template. Also creates a folder with the same name for images under _source/_assets/img/blog. Format can be md (default), adoc, or any file extension. If date is not specified, it will default to today's date.

Example:

npm run post create build-crud-app-with-nodejs

Stamp a Post

npm run post stamp [date]

Finds the latest blog post and updates the post date to the date specified. Date should be in ISO format (e.g. 2019-08-31). If no date is specified, today's date is used.

Faster Rendering for Development

npm run dev

This command removes all posts from the local development environment except those dated within the last two weeks.

Restoring Deleted Posts Before Pushing to GitHub

Deleted posts are restored automatically before the push occurs. However, you can manually restore all deleted posts using the following.

npm run dev-restore

jpf/okta-blog