Technology Transformation Services website

This is the code for tts.gsa.gov. Our tech stack in short is:

• Eleventy (11ty)
• U.S. Web Design System v 3.0 (USWDS)

This site strives to be compliant with requirements set by 21st Century IDEA Act.

The standards require that a website or digital service:

• is accessible to individuals with disabilities;
• has a consistent appearance;
• does not duplicate any legacy websites (the legislation also requires agencies to ensure that legacy websites are regularly reviewed, removed, and consolidated);
• has a search function;
• uses an industry standard secure connection;
• is designed around user needs with data-driven analysis influencing management and development decisions, using qualitative and quantitative data to determine user goals, needs, and behaviors, and continually test the website, web-based form, web-based application, or digital service to ensure that user needs are addressed;
• allows for user customization; and
• is mobile-friendly.

Getting Started

Installing Dependencies

npm install

Building the Assets

npm run build

Running a Dev Instance

npm run serve

Accessing the Dev Instances

Point your browser to http://localhost:3000/

How To

Creating links

For preview links generated on the platform, we automatically set the pathPrefix in the .eleventy.js file base on the BASEURL environment variable. We use the built-in 11ty filter for url to properly append the prefix path for the linked page. When adding new links, use the following syntax:

<a href="{{ '/myDir/' | url }}">Link to My Dir</a>

See the 11ty docs

Referencing Images

All of your images will be stored in the _img/ directory. To reference your images in your templates you can use the shortcodes built into the template.

For referencing an image without a style class, you will pass the template shortcode the image's source path and the alternative image name in that order, i.e.,

{% image "_img/my-image.png" "My PNG Image Alternative Name" %}

For referencing an image with a style class, you will pass the template shortcode the image's source path, class names, and the alternative image name in that order, i.e.,

{% image_with_class "_img/my-image.png" "img-class another-class" "My PNG Image Alternative Name" %}

Referencing USWDS Sprite Icons

USWDS has sprite icons available for use. Here is the list of icons available when using the sprite shortcode uswds_icon in the template. The following example is how you can reference the icon in a template.

{% uswds_icon "<USWDS sprite name>" %}

Expanding SCSS Styles

CSS and SASS can be added or imported into the styles/styles.scss. This template uses esbuild and autoprefixer to bundle your SASS/CSS and fingerprint the files in the site build.

Asset pipeline / build process

config/buildAssets.js is initiated first when executing npm run dev. This file initiates the esbuild build step which processes the SCSS and JS files into the outdir which is currently _site/assets. Since the esbuild entryNames config option template is set to '[dir]/[name]-[hash]', the asset files will have fingerprint IDs placed on the end of the file names to assist with browser caching. Once the esbuild build step is done, there's a call to a function whose job is to look at any CSS or JavaScript file inside _site/assets, read its hash ID, and write out key/value data to _data/assetPaths.json. This key in this data is the filename of the asset and the value is the full asset filename as it exists in _site/assets. An example of this would be:

The function finds a file _site/assets/styles/styles-C4XNB42.css and it ends up adding a key/value entry to _data/assetPaths.json that reads: "styles.css": "styles-C4XNB42.css".

We make use of this _data/assetPaths.json file in our templates, namely _includes/meta.html and _includes/scripts.html to load scripts and assets using a constant known name (such as styles.css) and don't have to worry about updating those linkages each time the content inside the assets causes the hash ID to change.

Once this function inside config/buildAssets is complete it returns control to the esbuild build step when then concludes. The next step is Eleventy begins its build step, looking at .eleventy.js for its configuration. Once Eleventy has completed its build process, browsersync begins serving the local repo and a plugin named chokidar along with Eleventy's own watch targets begin watching for CSS/JS file changes or changes to pages inside Eleventy, ready to hot reload when changes are detected.

Adding custom Javascript

Javascript can be added to the admin UI or site UI by adding or importing code into the js/admin.js or js/app.js files respectively. This template uses esbuild to bundle your javascript and fingerprint the files in the site build.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING for additional information.

Public domain

This project is in the worldwide public domain. As stated in CONTRIBUTING:

This project is in the public domain within the United States, and copyright and related rights in the work worldwide are waived through the CC0-1.0 Universal public domain dedication.

All contributions to this project will be released under the CC0-1.0 dedication. By submitting a pull request, you are agreeing to comply with this waiver of copyright interest.