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Frontend

The Guardian website frontend.

Frontend is a set of Play Framework 2 Scala applications.

Frontend is built in two parts, using Grunt for the client side asset build and SBT for the Play Framework backend.

Core Development Principles (lines in the sand)

These principles apply to all requests on www.theguardian.com and api.nextgen.guardianapps.co.uk (our Ajax URL)

On the server

• Every request can be cached and has an appropriate Cache-Control header set.
• Each request may only perform one I/O operation on the backend. (you cannot make two calls to the content API or any other 3rd party)
• The average response time of any endpoint is less than 500ms.
• Requests that take longer than two seconds will be terminated.

New developers quick-start

Contents:

1. Local Test Server setup

• IDE Setup
• Troubleshooting
• Optional steps
• Useful information and hints
• Additional Documentation

Local Test Server setup

You need a Mac or Linux PC (Ubuntu).

Before checking out the repository you may need to add an SSH key to your GitHub account.

Automatic

1. Check out the repository:

   git clone [email protected]:guardian/frontend.git
   cd frontend
   

2. Run ./setup.sh to install dependencies and compile assets

3. All being well, you should be able to run the app (make sure you have the latest version of java)

### Manual Install each of the things listed below:

Configuration files

You need 3 files on your machine.

1. /etc/gu/install_vars

STAGE=DEV

• ~/.gu/frontend.properties

  frontend.properties contains the content.

  Ask your team mates to share it with you if you don't get any results.

• ~/.aws/credentials

  Ask your team mate to create an account for you and securely send you the access key. For security, you must enable MFA - ask if you're not sure what this means.

[nextgen]
aws_access_key_id=[YOUR_AWS_ACCESS_KEY]
aws_secret_access_key=[YOUR_AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY]
region=eu-west-1

Homebrew

This is needed on Mac only:

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

A JDK

Ubuntu: Java 8 is required, but only OpenJDK 7 is available in the official Ubuntu repo. Install Java 8 as below.

sudo apt-get purge openjdk*
sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:webupd8team/java
sudo apt-get update
echo oracle-java8-installer shared/accepted-oracle-license-v1-1 select true | sudo /usr/bin/debconf-set-selections
sudo apt-get -y install oracle-java8-installer

Mac: Install from Oracle web site

Node.js

Ubuntu:

curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup | sudo bash -
sudo apt-get install -y nodejs

Mac:

brew install node

Grunt (build tool)

Ubuntu/Mac:

sudo npm -g install grunt-cli

Ruby >= v1.9.x (use ruby -v to check if you have it installed)

Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install ruby ruby-dev

Bundler

Ubuntu/Mac:

sudo gem install bundler

Xcode (if on a Mac, one of the Node modules requires it)

This is needed on Mac only: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/xcode/id497799835

Xcode installs an old version of git 1.9.3. If you need a newer version, you can run

brew install git
echo 'export PATH="/usr/local/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bash_profile

Quit Terminal, relaunch it and check that git --version outputs 2.1.3 or newer.

libpng

Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install libpng-dev

Mac:

brew install libpng

The frontend code

Note: Remember to see Troubleshooting below if you have any issues.

git clone [email protected]:guardian/frontend.git

cd frontend

Install node dependencies:

npm install

Install additional dependencies:

bundle
make install

npm and bundle are also run by install-dependencies.sh.

After this, you can compile the assets:

make compile

### Run the app In another console, run the supplied bash script [sbt]. The dot and slash are important in this command.

./sbt

Wait for SBT to be up and running. This may take 15 mins or so to start the first time - you'll know it's done when you get a prompt. If it is your first time, compile the project.

compile

Switch project by typing

project dev-build

Then run the project locally by typing

run

This also can take a while the first time.

Now check that you are up and running by hitting the following URLs:

• http://localhost:9000/film
• http://localhost:9000/media/2012/dec/05/newspaper-editors-sign-up-leveson
• http://localhost:9000/news/gallery/2012/dec/04/24-hours-in-pictures-gallery

Congratulations, you have a local instance running! Now continue on to set up your IDE.

##IDE setup You need a copy of the source code from above. If not, run this command:

git clone [email protected]:guardian/frontend.git

###EditorConfig plugin

Install to your IDE from http://editorconfig.org/#download

###IntelliJ metadata To create project files for use in IntelliJ, you need to make sure you install the Scala plugin from Preferences->Plugins. It supports SBT and Play. Then load IntelliJ, then click Import project and import the directory as an SBT project. Default settings are fine, except you need to make sure you choose JDK 1.8 (under JVM - Custom) otherwise it won't import correctly - You can find the location by pasting /usr/libexec/java_home into your terminal.

Congratulations, you are now set up to edit frontend code! See the Optional steps below for other things to do.

Troubleshooting

###NPM "EACCES"

If you get errors like this on npm install

npm WARN locking Error: EACCES, open '/Users/jduffell/.npm/_locks/karma-requirejs-4becac899d6c8f35.lock'

Sometimes when you install npm, it ends up owned by root (but in your home directory).

Check that you own your own .npm directory ls -ld ~/.npm

If it is owned by root, then take ownership of it sudo chown -R username:username ~/.npm

Global install permissions errors

The script installs global npm packages without sudo. If you get npm permission errors, follow the guide to using npm without sudo here.

###PhantomJS permissions errors (OSX) If you get an error about not having permissions to execute PhantomJS during make compile, your machine is probably set up as managed and you'll need to ask IT to make it unmanaged.

###File handles - "Too many files open"

You may run into a "too many files open" error during compilation or reloading. You can find out how many file handles you are allowed per process by running ulimit -n. This can be quite low, e.g. 1024 on linux or 256 on Mac

####Linux

To increase the limit do the following (instructions from Ubuntu 12.10)...

In the file /etc/security/limits.conf add the following two lines

*  soft  nofile 20000
*  hard  nofile 65000

And in the file /etc/pam.d/common-session add the following line.

session required pam_limits.so

Restart the machine.

For more info see http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-increase-the-maximum-number-of-open-files/

####Mac

• Edit your ~/.bash-profile file
• add the following line: ulimit -n 1024
• save and close the file
• back at the command prompt enter: source .bash_profile and hit return.

Now you should be able to compile and run. Yay.

###"No route to host" or "Unsupported major.minor version 52.0"

If you get no route to host, it means you are not using the 1.8 jre. Type java -version to check. You may need to close and reopen your terminal if you installed 1.8 recently.

You may also see java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: play/runsupport/classloader/ApplicationClassLoaderProvider : Unsupported major.minor version 52.0 which is described in the Play 2.4 migration guide.

Follow the JDK install guide above.

Optional steps

###NVM Some packages (imagemin) are not working with newest Node.js. So if you want to run multiple Node.js versions on your system you may want to use nvm

###Memcached

Memcached sudo apt-get install memcached - (most of the time you do not want to use it as caching makes local development harder)

###Nginx

If you are working on Identity or Discussion, Nginx must be installed and configured to correctly serve the application, please refer to /nginx/README.md in this project.

###Vagrant

You can run the project with the supplied Vagrantfile - make sure you understand what Vagrant is http://www.vagrantup.com/

• Make sure you have Virtualbox and Vagrant installed (on Ubuntu sudo apt-get install virtualbox vagrant)
• Change directory into the folder where this README is located
• vagrant up - this will take a while, make some coffee
• You can now get onto the box by vagrant ssh
• The project is located in /vagrant so cd /vagrant
• ./sbt

###Client-side development mode

There is a make watch task available to build and watch for development changes.

make watch

Useful information and hints

###Play console

Play Framework will recompile code changes on refresh.

Further information on using the Play console is available here.

###Endpoints

The available endpoints are listed in conf/routes of each application and typically include:

• /management: Operations support as per standard webapp guidelines. See guardian-management.
• /<path>: Serve the Guardian URL at <path> if supported by this application.
• /assets/<file>: A convenience for DEV machines. Assets are CDNed in PROD and would not be available on DEV.

###Deploying

Deployment uses the Magenta library.

###Debugging

You can debug your local Frontend application, by attaching a debugger.

• Start Simple Build Tool in debug mode by typing ./sbt --debug.
• Build and run your application. See "Running" for steps.
• Use a debugger to attach to the remote Java process, on localhost:1044.

Any IDE debugger should be compatible. In IntelliJ, add a new Debug Configuration, based on the Remote default. Ensure the Transport is Socket, the Debugger mode is Attach, and the port is set to 1044. Start a new Debug session, and your breakpoints should be active.

Additional Documentation

If you're new, you'll want to see what libraries we use in frontend.

Further documentation notes and useful items can be found in docs.

• Integration testing documentation
• sbt
• play2-console
• play2-wiki
• sbteclipse
• sbt-idea
• magenta