Software Engineering: Coursework 1

Prerequisites

Software / Tools

node - we're using LTS (v16.13.2)
npm - usually bundled with Node.
docker - for containerizing the services.

Environment variables

For docker-compose:
.env file in project root folder.
This file is used by docker-compose to start the services with appropriate credentials and data.
DATABASE_* variables are for the MySQL container, while SERVER_* and DATABASE_URL are used by the express server.
An example.env file is provided in the repository that can be used as a template.

# Name of database that will be initialized in the docker mysql container
DATABASE_NAME=world
# Password that will be set for the root user
DATABASE_ROOT_PASSWORD=root
# User to be created for connecting to database
DATABASE_USER=user
# Password for said user
DATABASE_PASSWORD=password
# Port mysql will run on inside the docker network
DATABASE_DOCKER_PORT=3306
# Port that will be exposed on host machine's network and mapped to internal docker port for mysql
DATABASE_LOCAL_PORT=3307  
# Database connection string that the prisma client will use (express server)
# Note that instead of `localhost` like in development we're referencing the mysql service name (from docker-compose.yml) as the host. Additionally, the containers connect to each other inside the docker network, thus using *_DOCKER_PORT
DATABASE_URL="mysql://user:password@database:3306/world"
# Port express will run inside docker net
SERVER_DOCKER_PORT=8081
# Host machine mapped port (so we'd access the site via `localhost:8080`)
SERVER_LOCAL_PORT=8080

For express in dev mode:
./src/.env.development env file is required by the express app to connect to the database during development. In production DATABASE_URL from root .env file is passed by docker.
An example.env.development file inside the ./src/ folder can be used as a template.

src/.env.development

DATABASE_URL="mysql://user:password@ip:port/database"

Example:
user: joe
password: secret
ip: localhost
port: 3306 (DATABASE_LOCAL_PORT in dev)
database: world

DATABASE_URL="mysql://joe:secret@localhost:3307/world"

Running in development

1. Install project's dependencies:

Open a terminal window in the src directory and run:

npm install

2. Run development servers:

Database
First, start just the database using docker-compose:

docker-compose run --service-ports database

The --service-ports option is required for docker-compose to map the container port to localhost, so it's accessible to website dev server.

Express
Next, start the express server:

npm run dev

Running in production

1. Start the containers!

Open a terminal window at the project's root and run:

docker-compose up

You'll have to wait until the database is initialized before connecting, you'll see a message saying 'ready for connections` coming from the mysql daemon.
Once the logs calm down, you can visit the website by navigating to localhost:8080 in your browser of choice.

Shutting down
To shut down the containers, run:

docker-compose down

Optionally, you can pass --rmi all as an option to remove all the images and containers that were created by docker-compose.
On the next run, everything will be re-built.