Whitehall App

"Whitehall" is the code name for the Inside Government project, which aims to bring Government departments online in a consistent and user-friendly manner. Documention can be found on rdoc.

Getting set-up locally

Pre-requisites

• Ruby >= 1.9.3
• Rubygems and Bundler
• Mysql
• Imagemagick and Ghostscript (for generating thumbnails of uploaded PDFs)
• xpdf
• PhantomJS (for running the Javascript tests)

Creating the mysql user

The database.yml for this project is checked into source control so you'll need a local user with credentials that match those in database.yml.

mysql> grant all on `whitehall\_%`.* to whitehall@localhost identified by 'whitehall';

Preparing the app

$ cd /path/to/whitehall
$ bundle install

Set up the database

If you wish to use a sanitized export of the production data (recommended for internal staff) then see the alphagov/development repo for the replication script. Once that is imported upgrade your import to the latest schema version with

$ bundle exec rake db:migrate

Otherwise set up an empty database with:

$ bundle exec rake db:create:all
$ bundle exec rake db:schema:load

Running tests locally

Two environment variables can be (optionally) set up, typically:

GOVUK_APP_DOMAIN=dev.gov.uk
GOVUK_ASSET_ROOT=http://static.dev.gov.uk

Then run

$ bundle exec rake

Alternatively run

$ govuk_setenv whitehall env RAILS_ENV=test bundle exec rake

Note that using bowler or foreman will automatically use the govuk_setenv method for you.

Running tests in parallel

The test suite can be run in parallel like so:

rake test:in_parallel

This will automatically prepare your test database for parallel work.

Running javascript unit tests

Javascript unit tests can be run together:

rake test:javascript

To run individual tests or when debugging:

./script/javascript-test-server

And go to http://localhost:3100/test/qunit in the browser

NB: The shared mustache templates must be compiled for the tests to pass. Take care not to commit the compiled templates to the repository.

rake shared_mustache:compile
rake shared_mustache:clean

Running the server locally

$ bundle exec rails s

Creating new users in Production

New users will need a sign-on-o-tron account before they can access whitehall in production. You can create new sign-on-o-tron accounts with the capistrano task in alphagov-deployment/sign-on-o-tron. This will email the new user and prompt them to create their account.

Using local assets

• Set GOVUK_ASSET_ROOT to point to your local instance of the static app when running the whitehall app e.g. GOVUK_ASSET_ROOT=http://static.dev, this is set for you within the development VM.

Getting search running locally

The Whitehall app relies on Rummager for document indexing, and the Gov.UK frontend application to serve results.

To use a local copy of Rummager you'll need to:

• elasticsearch;
• Set the environment variable RUMMAGER_HOST to point to the local instance of Rummager (e.g. export RUMMAGER_HOST=http://rummager.dev in .powrc);
• You'll also need to set RUMMAGER_HOST when using the Rummager rake tasks e.g. RUMMAGER_HOST=http://rummager.dev rake rummager:index;
• Run the rummager and frontend applications to view results. You just need the rummager app to index results.

Note: Before you index the whitehall data, make sure you have created the rummager indices by running the following task from the rummager repo:

RUMMAGER_INDEX=government bundle exec rake rummager:migrate_index

Specifying a different endpoint for the GDS Content API

Whitehall uses the GDS Content API to serve categorisation for Detailed Guidance.

You need to set the following environment variables :-

CONTENT_API_ENDPOINT_URL # e.g. https://contentapi.preview.alphagov.co.uk
CONTENT_API_USERNAME
CONTENT_API_PASSWORD

Generating the documentation

We use YARD for the documentation. You can generate a local copy with:

yard server --reload

You can also read the docs on rdoc.info.