CONTRIBUTING.md

Campaign Finance Contributing Guide

Prerequisites

• NodeJS version v12 or newer and NPM
• Docker and Docker-Compose OR PostgreSQL
• Make

How to Run

MacOS/Linux

• Ensure all prerequisites are installed
• Run cp server/sample.env server/.env (If you do not wish to use docker, change the database url in the newly created .env file)
• Run make first-run this will run npm install for the ui and server and setup the db using Docker. After running this once you shouldn't need to run it again. (If you are not using Docker run make first-run-no-docker)
• Run make start this will start the UI and server running on ports 3000 and 3001 respectively. Both the UI and server will be running in watch mode, so any changes should automatically take effect. Type CTRL-c to exit
• View the project in your browser at localhost:3000

Windows

• Ensure all prerequisites are installed
• copy server/sample.env to server/.env (If you do not wish to use docker, change the database url in the newly created .env file)
• Add your DATABASE_URL to your environment
  • Powershell: $env:DATABASE_URL = 'YOUR_DATABASE_URL'
• Run make start this will start the UI and server running on ports 3000 and 3001 respectively. Both the UI and server will be running in watch mode, so any changes should automatically take effect. Type CTRL-c to exit
• View the project in your browser at localhost:3000

After the initial setup, to start and stop the project just run make start and CTRL-c to exit

Tech

UI

• React - A component based reactive UI library
• USWDS - For designs and components (this is similar to other libraries like Bootstrap)
  • USWDS Component Library - Pre-made React components for the USWDS

Backend

• NodeJS - A server side JavaScript runtime
• ExpressJS - An HTTP server for Node
• PostgreSQL - An open source relational database
• Docker - A container runtime
• Docker-Compose - A way to manager Docker applications

Project Structure

• ./src directory contains the UI React code
• ./server contains the backend API code

Wireframes

Wireframes are on Figma

How to contribute

• Fork the repo
• Create a feature branch
• Make your changes
• Commit and push your changes
• Create a PR from your forked repo to the main repo (be sure to link the issue)
• Tag two reviewers
• Squash and merge after PR is approved