Setup for development

How to run Mail 4 Good in development mode

This guide was written for linux-based machines. It will also work with OSX. Deployment on Windows is untested, and the current suggestion is to run Ubuntu in a virtual machine using software such as VirtualBox.

In development mode, Mail 4 Good has a number of useful utilities:

• Hot reloading with webpack hot middleware
• The ability to use Redux Dev Tools (a browser extension that allows for redux time travel & viewing state)
• Additional debugging information on the server

PREREQUISITES

Your machine should have NPM and Node >=7.4x installed. It will also need Redis and Postgres. A full guide for installing each of these is given below. Before you install any packages, ensure your package list is up to date with:

sudo apt-get update

NPM

sudo apt-get install -y npm

Node

curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_8.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt-get install -y nodejs

Redis

sudo apt-get install -y redis-server

Postgres

sudo apt-get install -y postgresql postgresql-contrib

SETUP

• Clone the repository. If you have forked the repo, make sure you clone the fork rather than the link below.

git clone https://github.com/freeCodeCamp/Mail-for-Good.git

• Change into the cloned directory. Install packages.

cd Mail-for-Good && npm install

• Set up your Google API key with this guide. There are only a few environment variables that need to be changed, these are listed below.

mv .env.example .env
# You need to edit the .env file. You can use nano, vim, atom, gedit - take your pick.
nano .env

# EXAMPLE .env FILE
GOOGLE_CONSUMER_KEY= Put your consumer key from Google here
GOOGLE_CONSUMER_SECRET= Put your consumer secret key from Google here
ENCRYPTION_PASSWORD= Put a long random password here, you don't need to remember it yourself

# The below lines are for configuring Postgres.
# If you know what you're doing, feel free to ignore the suggestions.
PSQL_USERNAME= Put your username here (which can be found with the command 'whoami')
PSQL_PASSWORD= Put the password you intend to use for your Postgres user here
PSQL_DATABASE= Put 'mail_for_good' here

• Start both redis-server and postgresql as background services.

sudo service redis-server start
sudo service postgresql start

# You can stop these services by replacing 'start' with 'stop', restart them with 'restart', and
# check their status with 'status'.

• We now need to configure the Postgres DB. We'll keep this part as simple as possible, but feel free to setup your own config if you wish.

# Running the command below will let you know your username.
whoami
# When you run the command below, enter your username and password. Answer 'y' when asked to be a superuser.
# Make sure the username and password match those specified in the .env file.
sudo -u postgres createuser --interactive --pwprompt
# Next, we need to create a database.
# feel free to skip this step and customise things on your own if you wish.
# The .env.example file contains info on environment variables used with PSQL.
createdb mail_for_good

-- Done! Run the command below then check out http://localhost:8080

# If you see an error relating to 'relation user does not exist', ignore it. We'll sort this soon.
npm run dev

Help

Got an issue? Want to report a bug or a new feature you're thinking of? Please let us know here!