Gridcoin Web Client

The original intent of this project was to provide a decent GUI for a headless Gridcoin Research (GRC) node (e.g. a Raspberry Pi), but it works just as well on workstations.

This software currently performs only read-only actions, so it does not allow the user to make transactions, lock or unlock their wallet, or vote in polls. That functionality is planned, so stay tuned.

Getting Started

Prerequisites

You will need to be running a gridcoinresearchd daemon with RPC enabled for this software to work properly. Note that at the time of writing, it seems that the full Gridcoin wallet GUI will not allow RPC even if it is configured.

Steps for compiling gridcoinresearchd from source can be found on the Gridcoin Wiki.

gridcoinresearch.conf

rpcuser=your_username
rpcpassword=your_password
rpcport=your_rpc_port
rpcallowip=127.0.0.1

I strongly encourage you to only allow RPC from localhost. Change rpcallowip at your own risk.

Installation

Installation is fairly straightforward. Just clone or otherwise download a copy of this repository. After that you need to package the front-end code with webpack.

Bash (Linux, OSX, etc.)

$ git clone https://github.com/rsparlin/Gridcoin-Web-Client.git
$ cd Gridcoin-Web-Client
$ npm install
$ npm run build-prod

Windows (command prompt)

> git clone https://github.com/rsparlin/Gridcoin-Web-Client.git
> cd Gridcoin-Web-Client
> npm install
> set NODE_ENV=production
> .\node_modules\.bin\webpack

Configuration

Configuration is stored in the config/ directory as JSON. The default.json file can be used as a template. Either modify default.json or create another that exactly matches your NODE_ENV.

I highly recommend you chmod 600 your configuration files to prevent other users from reading them.

Example config

{
	"rpc": {
		"baseurl": "http://localhost:5001/",
		"username": "your_user",
		"password": "your_password"
	},
	"boinc": {
		"boinccmd": "/usr/bin/boinccmd",
		"hosts": [
			{
				"hostname": "localhost",
				"password": "boincpassword"
			},
			{
				"hostname": "raspberry-pi",
				"password": "boincpassword"
			}
		]
	},
	"reverseDns": true,
	"geolocate": true
}

The following are the available options:

rpc.baseurl -- This should be set to the URL for your gridcoinresearchd RPC server. Typically all you will need to do for this is change the port.
rpc.username and rpc.password -- These should match the rpcuser and rpcpassword values in your gridcoinresearch.conf.
boinc.boinccmd -- Path to boinccmd executable.
boinc.hosts -- A JSON array of BOINC hosts, each with a hostname and password.
reverseDns -- When this is true, peers' IP addresses will be resolved to hostnames through DNS. This may slow the initial loading of the peer list.
geolocate -- When this is true, peers' locations will be determined using freegeoip. This may also slow the initial loading of the peer list.

Starting

Using PM2

To keep the server running, I recommend using PM2. To that end, you can use the provided ecosystem.config.js file. Modify it to your liking and then start it under the production environment.

$ sudo npm install -g pm2
$ pm2 start ecosystem.config.js --env production

Having PM2 launch on boot is also nice to have. See the relevant documentation for how to do that. For the lazy, the following should get you going:

$ pm2 start ecosystem.config.js --env production
$ pm2 save
$ sudo pm2 startup -u "$(whoami)" --hp "$HOME"

Note that the above will not work on Windows. The PM2 docs acknowledge this and provide recommendations.

Without PM2

You can also just run the server directly. You can specify the IP and port to bind on if you dislike the defaults (localhost on 8080).

Bash:

$ NODE_ENV=production GWC_HOST=localhost GWC_PORT=8080 npm start

Windows command prompt:

> set NODE_ENV=production
> set GWC_PORT=8080
> set GWC_HOST=localhost
> npm start

Built With

Hapi - Back-end framework (web server)
React - UI framework
Semantic UI React - UI framework
Webpack - Bundler

See other dependencies in the package.json.

Contributing

I'm very much welcome to bug reports, feature requests, and pull requests, though I can't say how long it will take me to follow up on them. I would love to devote more time to this project, but I still need to pay my bills somehow :)

Code Style

If you want to contribute code by submitting a pull request, I ask that you adhere to the code style.

This project adheres (mostly) to the Airbnb JavaScript Style Guide. Before submitting a pull request, make sure you are following it by running eslint with the included .eslintrc.json config file.

Branching strategy

At this point I only see a need to have two branches, development and master. If there becomes a need for it, I may add a staging branch. Pull requests should be performed against the development branch, and I will merge changes into master as things become stable. Releases will be tagged for those concerned with stability.

Authors

Ryan Sparlin - Initial work

See also the list of contributors who participated in this project.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License; see the LICENSE.md file for details.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to the Gridcoin Project, a cryptocurrency whose cause I can actually believe in.

Thanks also to PurpleBooth for this great readme template. I'm new to the open source software development scene, so it helped a bunch.