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NODEJS_SETUP.md

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Running the NodeJS server outside of Docker

These instruction are only valid for specific cases when you do not want to use Docker (./develop.sh) to run the server on your machine.

If for some reason you do not want to use our standard development environment (Docker), you can run the server code manually ( regardless of whether you are running dependencies (database, search,…) with Docker or you are running them manually)

Installing NodeJS

To install NodeJS, follow the instruction for your operating system on the official website

Installing Packages

The site depends on a number of node packages which can be installed using npm:

cd bookbrainz-site/
npm install

This command will also compile the site LESS and JavaScript source files.

Configuration

Our config.example.json is set up to work out of the box running everything in Docker. Addresses for the dependencies refer to docker container names, so that containers can communicate with each other.

For local development (run outside of Docker), make a copy of config/config.local.json.example and fill up the musicbrainz tokens. You can then pass this configuration file when running the server locally using --config flag. For example, npm start -- --config ./config/config.local.json will use ./config/config.local.json config instead of the Default config (config.json for Docker).

Building and running

A number of subcommands exist to manage the installation and run the server. These are described here; any commands not listed should not be called directly:


Debugging with VSCode

You can use VSCode to run the server or API and take advantage of its debugger, an invaluable tool I highly recommend you learn to use.

This will allow you to put breakpoints to stop and inspect the code and variables during its execution, advance code execution line by line and step into function calls, instead of putting console.log calls everywhere.

Here is a good introduction to debugging javascript in VSCode.

There are VSCode configuration files (in the .vscode folder) for running both the server and the tests, useful in both cases to debug into the code and see what is happening as the code executes. Make sure the dependencies (postgres, redis, elasticsearch) are running, and you can just open the debugger tray in VSCode, select 'Launch Program' and click the button!

BookBrainz uses Flow as a javascript typechecking library. VSCode is partial to Typescript, and needs to be configured to avoid confusion. We recommend you install the flow-for-vscode extension and follow this setup step: Set [VSCode configuration] javascript.validate.enable option to false or completely disable the built-in TypeScript extension for your project


Watch files and live reload with Webpack

Advanced users may want to use Webpack to build, watch files and inject rebuilt pages without having to refresh the page, keeping the application state intact, for the price of increased compilation time and resource usage (see note below).

If you are running the server manually, you can simply run npm run debug in the command line.

If you're using Docker and our ./develop.sh script, you will need to modify the docker-compose.yml file to:

  1. change the command to:
    • npm run debug if you only want to change client files (in src/client)
    • npm run debug-watch-server if you also want to modify server files (in src/server)
  2. mount the src folder

For example:

services:
  bookbrainz-site:
  # 1. Change the command to run
    command: npm run debug
    volumes:
      - "./config/config.json:/home/bookbrainz/bookbrainz-site/config/config.json:ro"
  # 2. Mount the src directory
      - "./src:/home/bookbrainz/bookbrainz-site/src"

Note: Using Webpack watch mode (npm run debug) results in more resource consumption (about ~1GB increased RAM usage) compared to running the standard web server.