This article outlines how to get Dashy running in a development environment, and outlines the basics of the architecture.
If you're adding new features, you may want to check out the [Development Guides](./docs/development-guides.md) docs, for tutorials covering basic tasks.
You will need either the latest or LTS version of **[Node.js](https://nodejs.org/)** to build and serve the application and **[Git](https://git-scm.com/downloads)** to easily fetch the code, and push any changes. If you plan on running or deploying the container, you'll also need **[Docker](https://docs.docker.com/get-docker/)**. To avoid any unexpected issues, ensure you've got at least **[NPM](https://www.npmjs.com/get-npm)** V 7.5 or **[Yarn](https://classic.yarnpkg.com/en/docs/install/#windows-stable)** 1.22 (you may find [NVM](https://github.com/nvm-sh/nvm) helpful for switching/ managing versions).
Dashy should now be being served on http://localhost:8080/. Hot reload is enabled, so making changes to any of the files will trigger them to be rebuilt and the page refreshed.
- **`yarn build`** - In the interest of speed, the application is pre-compiled, this means that the config file is read during build-time, and therefore the app needs to rebuilt for any new changes to take effect. Luckily this is very straight forward. Just run `yarn build` or `docker exec -it [container-id] yarn build`
- **`yarn start`** - Starts a web server, and serves up the production site from `./dist` (must run build command first)
#### Development
- **`yarn dev`** - Starts the development server with hot reloading
- **`yarn lint`** - Lints code to ensure it follows a consistent, neat style
- **`yarn test`** - Runs tests, and outputs results
#### Utils and Checks
- **`yarn validate-config`** - If you have quite a long configuration file, you may wish to check that it's all good to go, before deploying the app. This can be done with `yarn validate-config` or `docker exec -it [container-id] yarn validate-config`. Your config file needs to be in `/public/conf.yml` (or within your Docker container at `/app/public/conf.yml`). This will first check that your YAML is valid, and then validates it against Dashy's [schema](https://github.com/Lissy93/dashy/blob/master/src/utils/ConfigSchema.js).
- **`yarn health-check`** - Checks that the application is up and running on it's specified port, and outputs current status and response times. Useful for integrating into your monitoring service, if you need to maintain high system availability
#### Alternate Start Commands
- **`yarn build-and-start`** - Builds the app, runs checks and starts the production server. Commands are run in parallel, and so is faster than running them in independently. Uses the `yarn build` and `yarn start` commands
- **`yarn build-watch`** - If you find yourself making frequent changes to your configuration, and do not want to have to keep manually rebuilding, then this option is for you. It will watch for changes to any files within the projects root, and then trigger a rebuild. Note that if you are developing new features, then `yarn dev` would be more appropriate, as it's significantly faster at recompiling (under 1 second), and has hot reloading, linting and testing integrated
- **`yarn pm2-start`** - Starts the Node server using [PM2](https://pm2.keymetrics.io/), a process manager for Node.js applications, that helps them stay alive. PM2 has some built-in basic monitoring features, and an optional [management solution](https://pm2.io/). If you are running the app on bare metal, it is recommended to use this start command
- You can manage the app using the [Vue-CLI Service](https://cli.vuejs.org/guide/cli-service.html), with `npx vue-cli-service [command]`. Or to start the Vue Management UI, run `npx vue ui`, and open `http://localhost:8000`
All environmental variables are optional. Currently there are not many environmental variables used, as most of the user preferences are stored under `appConfig` in the `conf.yml` file.
You can set the environment using the `NODE_ENV` variable. By default, the correct environment should be selected based on the script you run to start the app. The following environments are supported: `production`, `development` and `test`. For more info, see [Vue CLI Environment Modes](https://cli.vuejs.org/guide/mode-and-env.html#modes).
New to Web Development? Glad you're here! Dashy is a pretty simple app, so it should make a good candidate for your first PR. Presuming that you already have a basic knowledge of JavaScript, the following articles should point you in the right direction for getting up to speed with the technologies used in this project:
- [Using TypeScript with Vue.js](https://blog.logrocket.com/vue-typescript-tutorial-examples/)
- [Git cheat sheet](http://git-cheatsheet.com/)
- [Basics of using NPM](https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/what-is-npm-a-node-package-manager-tutorial-for-beginners/)
As well as Node, Git and Docker- you'll also need an IDE (e.g. [VS Code](https://code.visualstudio.com/) or [Vim](https://www.vim.org/)) and a terminal (Windows users may find [WSL](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/) more convenient).
Linting is done using [ESLint](https://eslint.org/), and using the [Vue.js Styleguide](https://github.com/vuejs/eslint-config-standard), which is very similar to the [AirBnB Stylguide](https://github.com/airbnb/javascript). You can run `yarn lint` to report and fix issues. While the dev server is running, issues will be reported to the console automatically, and any lint errors will trigger the build to fail. Note that all lint checks must pass before any PR can be merged. Linting is also run as a git pre-commit hook
The easiest method of checking performance is to use Chromium's build in auditing tool, Lighthouse. To run the test, open Developer Tools (usually F12) --> Lighthouse and click on the 'Generate Report' button at the bottom.
### Dependencies - BundlePhobia
[BundlePhobia](https://bundlephobia.com/) is a really useful app that lets you analyze the cost of adding any particular dependency to an application
When running the build command, several warnings appear. These are not errors, and do not affect the security or performance of the application. They will be addressed in a future update
`WARN A new version of sass-loader is available. Please upgrade for best experience.` - Currently we're using an older version of SASS loader, since the more recent releases do not seem to be compatible with the Vue CLI's webpack configuration.
`WARN asset size limit: The following asset(s) exceed the recommended size limit (244 KiB).` - For the PWA to support Windows 10, a splash screen asset is required, and is quite large. This throws a warning, however PWA assets are not loaded until needed, so shouldn't have any impact on application performance. A similar warning is thrown for the Raleway font, and that is looking to be addressed.
