kennisyaps/forked-project-feedback

A training project for ThoughtWorks JumpStart training program

README

Required Plugins for VS Code

You need to install the following plugins for VS Code.

Debugger for Chrome

ESLint

Jest

Prettier - Code formatter

After checkout

Run the following commands

yarn install

Setup your local MongoDB

To run the server locally, you need a connection to some MongoDB instance.

If you installed the MongoDB on your machine, you can start it with

mongod --dbpath /path/to/mongodb/storage/directory

Note that the /path/to/mongodb/storage/directory should exist and you have write permission to it.

Configure your local .env file

In the server directory, you need to add one .env file.

You can follow the example in .env.example file.

• PORT
  • This is the port number that the server listens on
• FRONTEND_PORT
  • This is the port number that the frontend web server listens on. You only need to set this when you run this application locally
• SYSTEM_EMAIL_ADDRESS
  • This is the email address to be used as from-address when the application sends emails to users
• APPLICATION_NAME
  • This is the name of your application
• NODE_ENV
  • This needs to be set to 'production' in your production deployment environment. Set it to 'local' when you run the server locally.
• MONGODB_URI
  • If you run the server locally, you need to set this to your local MongoDB instance URI.
  • In Heroku, This should have been automatically set by Heroku when you add an mLab add-on
• SECRET
  • You need to choose a random secret to sign JWT tokens during authentication
• MAILGUN_API_KEY
  • To send emails via MAILGUN service, you need to register one account on MAILGUN and get an API key
• MAILGUN_DOMAIN
  • This is your MAILGUN domain (you can find it at https://app.mailgun.com/app/domains)

Start both client and server locally

yarn start

Deploy to Heroku

This project follows the setup as described in Running Create React App and Express (CRAE) on Heroku, except that I didn't use babel on the server side.

You can follow the steps below to deploy this application to Heroku.

Steps

1. Create a new application on heroku and link it with the github repository

2. configure a new add-on for MongoDB (e.g. the one from mLab)

3. configure environment variables in Heroku application settings

You need to configure the environment variables you have put in the server/.env file, except for PORT and FRONTEND_PORT

4. deploy the application

Deployment Script

// navigate to the root of your project
// login to Heroku (if you aren't already)
heroku login

// create your heroku project, make sure to replace name-of-my-app, // with the actual name of your app. Note, this name must be unique // across of all heroku. 
heroku create name-of-my-app

// add the latest nodejs build pack to our project
heroku buildpacks:set https://github.com/heroku/heroku-buildpack-nodejs#yarn

// add mongodb add-on
heroku addons:create mongolab:sandbox

// set environment variables

heroku config:set NODE_ENV=production
heroku config:set SECRET=choose_your_secret_for_jwt_token_signing
heroku config:set MAILGUN_API_KEY=your_mailgun_api_key
heroku config:set MAILGUN_DOMAIN=your_mailgun_domain
heroku config:set [email protected]
heroku config:set APPLICATION_NAME=yourdomain.com

// push our code to heroku.  This step will take the longest
git push heroku master
// let's launch your app
heroku open

Thanks

While working on this project, I learnt a lot of useful tips from the following projects:

• megaboilerplate
• node-express-realworld-example-app
• Running Create React App and Express (CRAE) on Heroku