Application Portal

An application management system created using Node.js, React, Redux, Express, and a PostgreSQL database.

Setup

To use this program locally, you'll need to take the following steps:

  • Clone this repo to your local machine

  • Run the following commands:

    * npm install
    * createdb amsportal
    * npm run seed
    
    For testing run:
    
     * createdb amsportal-test
     * npm test
    

Customize

To use OAuth with Google, complete the step above with a real client ID and client secret from Google

Set up your .env or secrets.js file where you will store the variables needed to run Google OAuth. Variables might look like this:

  process.env.GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID = 'hush hush'
  process.env.GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET = 'pretty secret'
  process.env.GOOGLE_CALLBACK = '/auth/google/callback'

Remember to .gitignore the file you use!

Linting

Program comes with custom linters. Feel free to customize and change for your purposes.

Start

npm run start-dev will run the program.

If you want to run the server and/or webpack separately, you can also npm run start-server and npm run build-client.

Deployment

Ready to go world wide? Here's a guide to deployment! There are two (compatible) ways to deploy:

  • automatically, via continuous integration
  • manually, from your local machine

Either way, you'll need to set up your deployment server to start:

Prep

  1. Set up the Heroku command line tools
  2. heroku login
  3. Add a git remote for heroku:
  • If you're creating a new app...

    1. heroku create or heroku create your-app-name if you have a name in mind.
    2. heroku addons:create heroku-postgresql:hobby-dev to add ("provision") a postgres database to your heroku dyno
  • If you already have a Heroku app...

    1. heroku git:remote your-app-name You'll need to be a collaborator on the app.

When you're ready to deploy

Option A: Automatic Deployment via Continuous Integration

(NOTE: This step assumes that you already have Travis-CI testing your code.) Follow these steps to complete the job.

  1. Run git checkout master && git pull && git checkout -b f/travis-deploy (or use some other new branch name).
  2. Un-comment the bottom part of .travis.yml (the before_deploy and deploy sections)
  3. Add your Heroku app name to deploy.app, where it says "YOUR HEROKU APP NAME HERE". For example, if your domain is cool-salty-conifer.herokuapp.com, your app name is cool-salty-conifer.
  4. Install the Travis CLI tools by following the instructions here.
  5. Run travis encrypt $(heroku auth:token) --org to encrypt your Heroku API key. Warning: do not run the --add command suggested by Travis, that will rewrite part of our existing config!
  6. Copy-paste your encrypted API key into the .travis.yml file under deploy.api_key.secure, where it says "YOUR ENCRYPTED API KEY HERE".
  7. git add -A && git commit -m 'travis: activate deployment' && git push -u origin f/travis-deploy
  8. Make a PR for the new branch, get it approved, and merge it into master.

That's it! From now on, whenever master is updated on GitHub, Travis will automatically push the app to Heroku for you.

Option B: Manual Deployment from your Local Machine

Some developers may prefer to control deployment rather than rely on automation. Your local copy of the application can be pushed up to Heroku at will, using Boilermaker's handy deployment script:

  1. Make sure that all your work is fully committed and pushed to your master branch on Github.
  2. If you currently have an existing branch called "deploy", delete it now (git branch -d deploy). We're going to use a dummy branch with the name "deploy" (see below), so if you have one lying around, the script below will error
  3. npm run deploy - this will cause the following commands to happen in order:
  • git checkout -b deploy: checks out a new branch called "deploy". Note that the name "deploy" here isn't magical, but it needs to match the name of the branch we specify when we push to our heroku remote.
  • webpack -p: webpack will run in "production mode"
  • git add -f public/bundle.js public/bundle.js.map: "force" add the otherwise gitignored build files
  • git commit --allow-empty -m 'Deploying': create a commit, even if nothing changed
  • git push --force heroku deploy:master: push your local "deploy" branch to the "master" branch on heroku
  • git checkout master: return to your master branch
  • git branch -D deploy: remove the deploy branch

Now, you should be deployed!

Why do all of these steps? The big reason is because we don't want our production server to be cluttered up with dev dependencies like webpack, but at the same time we don't want our development git-tracking to be cluttered with production build files like bundle.js! By doing these steps, we make sure our development and production environments both stay nice and clean!