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Developing

This article outlines how to get Dashy running in a development environment, and outlines the basics of the architecture.

Setting up the Dev Environment

Prerequisites

You will need either the latest or LTS version of Node.js to build and serve the application and Git to easily fetch the code, and push any changes. If you plan on running or deploying the container, you'll also need Docker. To avoid any unexpected issues, ensure you've got at least NPM V 7.5 or Yarn 1.22 (you may find NVM helpful for switching/ managing versions).

Running the Project

  1. Get Code: git clone git@github.com:Lissy93/dashy.git
  2. Navigate into the directory: cd dashy
  3. Install dependencies: yarn
  4. Start dev server: yarn dev

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.

Project Commands

  • yarn dev - Starts the development server with hot reloading
  • yarn build - Builds the project for production, and outputs it into ./dist
  • yarn start - Starts a web server, and serves up the production site from ./dist
  • yarn validate-config - Parses and validates your conf.yml against Dashy's schema
  • yarn lint - Lints code to ensure it follows a consistent, neat style
  • yarn test - Runs tests, and outputs results

There is also:

  • yarn build-and-start will run yarn build and yarn start
  • yarn build-watch will output contents to ./dist and recompile when anything in ./src is modified, you can then use either yarn start or your own server, to have a production environment that watches for changes.

Using the Vue CLI:

  • The app is build with Vue, and uses the Vue-CLI Service for basic commands.
  • If you have NPX installed, then you can invoke the Vue CLI binary using npx vue-cli-service [command]
  • Vue also has a GUI environment that can be used for basic project management, and may be useful for beginners, this can be started by running vue ui, and opening up http://localhost:8000

Note:

  • If you are using NPM, replace yarn with npm run
  • If you are using Docker, precede each command with docker exec -it [container-id]. Container ID can be found by running docker ps

Environmental Variables

  • PORT - The port in which the application will run (defaults to 4000 for the Node.js server, and 80 within the Docker container)
  • NODE_ENV - Which environment to use, either production, development or test
  • VUE_APP_DOMAIN - The URL where Dashy is going to be accessible from. This should include the protocol, hostname and (if not 80 or 443), then the port too, e.g. https://localhost:3000, http://192.168.1.2:4002 or https://dashy.mydomain.com

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.

If you do add new variables, ensure that there is always a fallback (define it in defaults.js), so as to not cause breaking changes. Don't commit your .env file to git, but instead take a few moments to document what you've added under the appropriate section. Try and follow the concepts outlined in the 12 factor app, as these are good practices.

Any environmental variables used by the frontend are preceded with VUE_APP_. Vue will merge the contents of your .env file into the app in a similar way to the 'dotenv' package, where any variables that you set on your system will always take preference over the contents of any .env file.

Environment Modes

Both the Node app and Vue app supports several environments: production, development and test. You can set the environment using the NODE_ENV variable (either with your OS, in the Docker script or in an .env file - see Environmental Variables above).

The production environment will build the app in full, minifying and streamlining all assets. This means that building takes longer, but the app will then run faster. Whereas the dev environment creates a webpack configuration which enables HMR, doesn't hash assets or create vendor bundles in order to allow for fast re-builds when running a dev server. It supports sourcemaps and other debugging tools, re-compiles and reloads quickly but is not optimized, and so the app will not be as snappy as it could be. The test environment is intended for test running servers, it ignores assets that aren't needed for testing, and focuses on running all the E2E, regression and unit tests. For more information, see Vue CLI Environment Modes.

By default:

  • production is used by yarn build (or vue-cli-service build) and yarn build-and-start and yarn pm2-start
  • development is used by yarn dev (or vue-cli-service serve)
  • test is used by yarn test (or vue-cli-service test:unit)

Resources for Beginners

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:

As well as Node, Git and Docker- you'll also need an IDE (e.g. VS Code or Vim) and a terminal (Windows users may find WSL more convenient).

Style Guide

Linting is done using ESLint, and using the Vue.js Styleguide, which is very similar to the AirBnB Stylguide. You can run yarn lint to report and fix issues. While the dev server is running, issues will be reported to the console automatically. 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 most significant things to note are:

  • Indentation should be done with two spaces
  • Strings should use single quotes
  • All statements must end in a semi-colon
  • The final element in all objects must be preceded with a comma
  • Maximum line length is 100
  • There must be exactly one blank line between sections, before function names, and at the end of the file
  • With conditionals, put else on the same line as your if block’s closing brace
  • All multiline blocks must use braces
  • Avoid console statements in the frontend

For the full styleguide, see: github.com/airbnb/javascript

Frontend Components

All frontend code is located in the ./src directory, which is split into 5 sub-folders:

  • Components - All frontend web components are located here. Each component should have a distinct, well defined and simple task, and ideally should not be too long. The components directory is organised into a series of sub-directories, representing a specific area of the application
    • PageStrcture - Components relating to overall page structure (nav, footer, etc)
    • FormElements - Reusable form elements (button, input field, etc)
    • LinkItems - Components relating to Dashy's sections and items (item group, item, item icon, etc)
    • Configuration - Components relating to Dashy's configuration forms (cloud backup, JSON editor, etc)
  • Views - Each view directly corresponds to a route (defined in the router), and in effectively a page. They should have minimal logic, and just contain a few components
  • Utils - These are helper functions, or logic that is used within the app does not include an UI elements
  • Styles - Any SCSS that is used globally throughout that app, and is not specific to a single component goes here. This includes variables, color themes, typography settings, CSS reset and media queries
  • Assets - Static assets that need to be bundled into the application, but do not require any manipulation go here. This includes interface icons and fonts

The structure of the components directory is similar to that of the frontend application layout

Common Tasks

Creating a new theme

See Theming

Adding a new option in the config file

All application config is specified in ./public/conf.yml - see Configuring Docs for info. Before adding a new option in the config file, first ensure that there is nothing similar available, that is is definitely necessary, it will not conflict with any other options and most importantly that it will not cause any breaking changes. Ensure that you choose an appropriate and relevant section to place it under.

Checklist:

  • Update the Schema with the parameters for your new option
  • Set a default value (if required) within defaults.js
  • Document the new value in configuring.md
  • Test that the reading of the new attribute is properly handled, and will not cause any errors when it is missing or populated with an unexpected value

Updating Dependencies

Running yarn upgrade will updated all dependencies based on the ranges specified in the package.json. The yarn.lock file will be updated, as will the contents of ./node_modules, for more info, see the yarn upgrade documentation. It is important to thoroughly test after any big dependency updates.

Development Tools

Performance - Lighthouse

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 is a really useful app that lets you analyze the cost of adding any particular dependency to an application

Directory Structure

Files in the Root: ./

╮
├── package.json        # Project meta-data, dependencies and paths to scripts
├── src/                # Project front-end source code
├── server.js           # A Node.js server to serve up the /dist directory
├── vue.config.js       # Vue.js configuration
├── Dockerfile          # The blueprint for building the Docker container
├── docker-compose.yml  # A Docker run command
├── .env                # Location for any environmental variables
├── yarn.lock           # Auto-generated list of current packages and version numbers
├── docs/               # Markdown documentation
├── README.md           # Readme, basic info for getting started
├── LICENSE.md          # License for use
╯

Frontend Source: ./src/

./src
├── App.vue                       # Vue.js starting file
├── assets                        # Static non-compiled assets
│  ├── fonts                      # .ttf font files
│  ╰── interface-icons            # SVG icons used in the app 
├── components                    # All front-end Vue web components
│  ├── Configuration              # Components relating to the user config pop-up
│  │  ├── CloudBackupRestore.vue  # Form where the user manages cloud sync options
│  │  ├── ConfigContainer.vue     # Main container, wrapping all other config components
│  │  ├── CustomCss.vue           # Form where the user can input custom CSS
│  │  ├── EditSiteMeta.vue        # Form where the user can edit site meta data
│  │  ╰── JsonEditor.vue          # JSON editor, where the user can modify the main config file
│  ├── FormElements               # Basic form elements used throughout the app
│  │  ├── Button.vue              # Standard button component
│  │  └── Input.vue               # Standard text field input component
│  ├── LinkItems                  # Components for Sections and Link Items
│  │  ├── Collapsable.vue         # The collapsible functionality of sections
│  │  ├── IframeModal.vue         # Pop-up iframe modal, for viewing websites within the app
│  │  ├── Item.vue                # Main link item, which is displayed within an item group
│  │  ├── ItemGroup.vue           # Item group is a section containing icons
│  │  ├── ItemIcon.vue            # The icon used by both items and sections
│  │  ╰── ItemOpenMethodIcon.vue  # A small icon, visible on hover, indicating opening method 
│  ├── PageStrcture               # Components relating the main structure of the page
│  │  ├── Footer.vue              # Footer, visible at the bottom of all pages
│  │  ├── Header.vue              # Header, visible at the top of pages, and includes title and nav
│  │  ├── Nav.vue                 # Navigation bar, includes a list of links
│  │  ╰── PageTitle.vue           # Page title and sub-title, visible within the Header
│  ╰── Settings                   # Components relating to the quick-settings, in the top-right
│     ├── ConfigLauncher.vue      # Icon that when clicked will launch the Configuration component
│     ├── ItemSizeSelector.vue    # Set of buttons used to set and save item size
│     ├── KeyboardShortcutInfo.vue# Small pop-up displaying the available keyboard shortcuts
│     ├── LayoutSelector.vue      # Set of buttons, letting the user select their desired layout
│     ├── SearchBar.vue           # The input field in the header, used for searching the app
│     ├── SettingsContainer.vue   # Container that wraps all the quick-settings components
│     ╰── ThemeSelector.vue       # Drop-down menu enabling the user to select and change themes
├── main.js                       # Main front-end entry point
├── registerServiceWorker.js      # Registers and manages service workers, for PWA apps
├── router.js                     # Defines all available application routes
├── styles                        # Directory of all globally used common SCSS styles
├── utils                         # Directory of re-used helper functions
│  ├── ArrowKeyNavigation.js      # Functionality for arrow-key navigation
│  ├── CloudBackup.js             # Functionality for encrypting, processing and network calls
│  ├── ConfigSchema.json          # The schema, used to validate the users conf.yml file
│  ├── ConfigValidator.js         # A helper script that validates the config file against schema
│  ├── defaults.js                # Global constants and their default values
│  ├── ErrorHandler.js            # Helper function called when an error is returned
│  ├── JsonToYaml.js              # Function that parses and converts raw JSON into valid YAML
│  ╰── ThemeHelper.js             # Function that handles the fetching and setting of user themes
╰── views                         # Directory of available pages, corresponding to available routes
   ╰── Home.vue                   # The home page container

Dependencies and Packages

During development I made the conscious decision to not reinvent the wheel if not necessary. It is often really tempting to try an build everything yourself, but sometimes it's just not practical. Often there's packages out there, developed by amazing individuals which are probably built better than I could have done. That being said, I have looked through the code of most these dependencies, to verify that they are both legitimate and efficient.

The following packages are used. Full credit, and massive kudos to each of their authors.

Core

At it's core, the application uses Vue.js, as well as it's services. Styling is done with SCSS, JavaScript is currently Babel, (but I am in the process of converting to TypeScript), linting is done with ESLint, the config is defined in YAML, and there is a simple Node.js server to serve up the static app.

Frontend Components

Utilities

  • crypto-js - Encryption implementations by @evanvosberg and community MIT
  • axios - Promise based HTTP client by @mzabriskie and community MIT
  • ajv - JSON schema Validator by @epoberezkin and community MIT

Server

  • connect - Minimilistic middleware layer for chaining together Node.js requests handled by the server file MIT
  • serve-static - Lightweight static Node file server MIT
External Services

The 1-Click deploy demo uses Play-with-Docker Labs. Code is hosted on GitHub, Docker image is hosted on DockerHub, and the demos are hosted on Netlify.

Notes

Known Warnings

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.