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Build Status

This is the source code for teach.mozilla.org.

For a summary of the most recent changes to the project, please see CHANGELOG.md. It's awesome.

Overview

This software consists of two major parts:

  • A static site generator that creates a number of index.html files in various directories which can be viewed in any browser, including ones that don't support JavaScript.
  • Client-side JavaScript code that progressively enhances the user experience based on browser capabilities.

It should be noted that, based on the product roadmap, the static site generator may eventually evolve into becoming a dynamic server.

Get started

Dependencies

To get a local version of the site running, you'll need to have git and node installed on your local machine.

Clone

In order to contribute to this project, you'll need to create your own fork of it and make pull-requests against our master branch.

Clone from your own fork or from the original:

git clone [email protected]:mozilla/teach.mozilla.org.git
cd teach.mozilla.org

Build and Develop

To start developing, all you need to do is run the following in the teach.mozilla.org directory you just created:

$> npm install
$> npm start

This will start a webserver for you at http://localhost:8008, and run a watch process so that your front-end assets will be regenerated as you make changes.

A note about source maps

Because this project uses a variety of tools that transform the original source code before delivering it to the browser, it is critical for source maps to work properly in order to ensure a pleasant developer experience.

However, due to the unfortunate realities of software development, there isn't a "one size fits all" solution to this. Please be sure to read the Environment Variables section below and configure your environment as needed to ensure that you're seeing useful line numbers for whatever part of the codebase you need to change.

Directory and naming conventions

JS

  • lib/: Non-react modules, as well as entry-point modules like main.jsx and routes.jsx
  • components/: Re-usable react components that can be used throughout the site
  • pages/: React "page" components, i.e. top-level pages required by lib/router
  • hoc/: React higher-order components

Less

  • less/: This is where you should add styles. common.less is the entry-point.

Other

  • gulp/: build tasks used for running the site, as well as testing
  • build/: used as a staging area when the site gets built
  • test/: For js tests, manual tests
  • img/: For images
  • dist/: Generated site assets goes here. This folder is gitignored, do not edit files here.

Test

Fully testing the code is accomplished by running npm test, which exercises a number of different aspects of the codebase described below.

Static Site Generation (Smoke Test)

This generates a full static site and ensures that no React warnings are raised.

Individually running only the smoke test can be accomplished via npm run smoketest.

Unit Tests

Unit tests are spread across two different testing environments.

Both environments use the mocha test runner and should for assertions.

Node Tests

These tests generally exercise the code of the static site generator and are located in the test directory.

Each test file should end with .test.js and will be automatically discovered by the test runner.

Individually running only the node unit tests can be accomplished via node_modules/.bin/mocha test/*.test.js. For more options, see the documentation for mocha (1).

Browser Tests

These tests exercise the code that runs in the user's browser. They're located in the test/browser directory.

Each test file should end with .test.js or .test.jsx and will be automatically discovered by the test runner.

Individually running only the browser unit tests can be accomplished by first running npm start and then visiting http://localhost:8008/test/ in your browser.

Manual Tests

For detailed information about manual testing, see the Manual Testing section of CONTRIBUTING.md.

Generating A Static Site

Run npm run build to generate a static site in dist/ that doesn't require any client-side JavaScript. This static site also uses history.pushState for navigation if the browser supports it.

For reference, a recent static build of the site can be found at teach.mofostaging.net.

The static site can also be deployed to S3 via npm run s3, but this requires setting at least a few environment variables. See the Environment Variables section below for more details.

Environment Variables

The following environment variables can be used to modify how the software works.

Name Description
NODE_ENV set this to production to automatically minify code and remove various development-only affordances.
SHOW_DEV_RIBBON set this to on to show the "dev version" ribbon even when NODE_ENV is set to production. This can be used on staging sites.
WEBPACK_DEVTOOL determines the setting for the devtool Webpack option. In development, it defaults to eval, while in production it defaults to source-map. For more details on the trade-offs between different options, see our conversation on sourcemaps.
LESS_AUTOPREFIXER set this to off to disable the LESS autoprefixer and enable useful CSS source maps, which is a workaround for #413.
AWS_ACCESS_KEY is the Amazon Web Services access key used when uploading to s3 via npm run s3.
AWS_SECRET_KEY is the Amazon Web Services secret key used when uploading to s3 via npm run s3.
AWS_BUCKET is the S3 bucket to upload to when using npm run s3. It defaults to teach.mofostaging.net.
AWS_REGION is the S3 region to upload to when using npm run s3. It defaults to us-east-1.
ORIGIN is the domain name of which the site is hosted. This is used in situations where absolute URLs are required, such as generating a sitemap.xml file.
MAPBOX_ACCESS_TOKEN is the Mapbox access token to use for embedded maps in the website. Optional.
MAPBOX_MAP_ID is the Mapbox map ID to use for embedded maps in the website. Optional.
TEACH_API_URL is the origin of the Teach API server. Defaults to https://teach-api.herokuapp.com.
GA_ACCOUNT is the property ID of the Google Analytics account. E.g. UA-123.... It defaults to the property ID for the Teach site. Set it to DISABLED to disable Google Analytics entirely.
GA_DEBUG When set to 'on' will output verbose info to the console about what data is being sent to Google Analytics.
PLEDGE_MAILINGLIST_URL is the pledge signup form URL generated by BSD. If undefined, mailinglist signup is simulated for development purposes.
PLEDGE_MAILINGLIST_PRIVACY_NAME is the name attribute of the privacy policy checkbox on the pledge signup form generated by BSD.
PORT is the port to serve the experimental lightweight dynamic server on. Defaults to 8008.
OPTIMIZELY_ID Optimizely Project ID (not a secret) e.g. '206878104'
OPTIMIZELY_ACTIVE If set to 'yes' (String) the project will include Optimizely snippet in the page load
MAKE_METADATA_URL The template source url to load users' Makes metadata. Username should be included in the URL as a variable. e.g., https://{username}.makes.org/makes.json

Using Environment Variables in Local Development

Create a file called .env in the root of your project, and then add all the environment variables you need into this using the following format:

export GA_ACCOUNT='xxxxxxx'
export TEACH_API_URL='xxxxxxx'

Lightweight Dynamic Server (Experimental)

The site can also be served through a lightweight server which dynamically generates requested HTML files. This feature is currently experimental. For more information on the rationale behind it, see #585.

To run the server in development mode, use npm run app. The server-side page rendering code will be dynamically updated as relevant files are changed.

For production deployment, you will need to:

  1. Set NODE_ENV=production and other relevant environment variables and then re-run npm install. This will build all static assets that won't change during production.

  2. Run node app.js.

The server is also designed to be easily deployable on Heroku.

References