Victron Energy documentation

Overview

This repository houses two applications: The frontend, which is written using VueJS, and the backend, which is written in PHP. They are meant to be deployed together on a single webserver. The (built) frontend provides all the rendered documentation files, and the backend handles all routing for non-existant paths.

This repository contains the application, while another repository (namely, www-documentation) contains the Markdown files and accompanying images which make up the actual documentation.

Requirements

• Install the latest version of Git.
• Install the latest (not the LTS) version of NodeJS.
• Install the latest version of npm.
• Install the latest version of PHP.
• Install the Graphics Draw extension for PHP.
• Install the lastest version of Composer.
• (Optional.) Install a web server such as Apache HTTPD.

To check the tools have been set up properly, check that you can run git version, node -v, npm -v, php -v and composer -V from a command terminal.

Execute the following commands in the (new, empty) directory where you want to set up the project:

• Check out the code: git clone [email protected]:victronenergy/victron-press.git .
• Initialize the documentation submodule: git submodule init
• Pull the latest documentation files: git submodule update --remote
• Install frontend dependencies: npm install
• Install backend dependencies: composer install
• Copy .env.example to .env and fill out the required configuration variables.

Environment variables

The following environment variables should be provided (for example via the .env file) for the application to work:

• OAUTH_CLIENT_ID. Required. GitHub OAuth App ID used for authenticating users.
• OAUTH_CLIENT_SECRET. Required. GitHub OAuth App client secret used for authentication.
• GITHUB_TOKEN. Required. GitHub API token used for making commits to the configured GitHub repository. Enter a Personal access token on an account that has access to the repository configured below, and provide it with repo scope access.
• GITHUB_USER. Required. The GitHub user or organisation owning the Git repository with the Markdown files this application will display and edit. Note that this should be the same repository that is checked out in /data/docs.
• GITHUB_REPO. Required. The repository name containing the Markdown files.
• GITHUB_BRANCH. Required. The branch name containing the Markdown files.
• SENTRY_DSN_FRONTEND. Optional. Sentry DSN for logging errors that occur in the frontend.
• SENTRY_DSN_BACKEND. Optional. Sentry DSN for logging errors that occur in the frontend.
• DOCS_BASE_URL. Required. Base url of where the documentation is located.

Running with Docker

Alternatively, a Dockerfile is included which includes all the runtime dependencies for the project. To use it:

• Check out the repository and its submodule as described above.
• Fill out the .env file with the required variables described above.
• Build the Docker container: docker build -t vic-press .
• Run the Docker container: docker run -p 80:80 vic-press
  • You may want to create volume mappings for /var/www/data/{locks,sessions,uploads} to preserve editing-related state across container rebuilds.

Frontend

The frontend is a VuePress application that renders the documenation and provides editor functionalities.

Building and running

There are multiple ways to work with the frontend part of the repository:

• You can run npm start to start a development webserver and automatically recompile any changes.
• You can run npm run build to simply build the frontend, which is placed in the /data/dist directory.
• You can run npm run buid:clean to clean all files from the /data/dist directory.
• You can run npm run build:html to build only the HTML application.
• You can run npm run build:pdf to build only the PDF files. (Note: broken on Windows, run in WSL.)
• You can run npm run lint to lint the VuePress configuration and templates.

Backend

The backend is a PHP application that handles routing of non-existing paths and provides an API used by the frontend to read and commit documentation files.

Building and running

There are multiple ways to work with the backend part of the repository:

• You can run composer build to build the frontend and copy the required backend files to /data/dist.
  • You can then run php -S localhost:8080 -t data/dist backend/router.php to start a development webserver.
• You can run composer test to run the backend tests.
• You can run composer lint to lint the PHP application.
• You can run composer fix to automatically fix PHP linting issues.

Application structure

Directory layout

• /backend/ contains the PHP backend application.
  • /src/ contains the backend application.
  • /test/ contains the backend application tests.
  • /web/ contains the docroot files for the backend.
• /frontend/ contains the JavaScript frontend application.
  • /markdown-it-plugins/ contains custom plugins for the Markdown renderer.
  • /markdown-pdf/ contains formatting files used when generating PDF files.
  • /vuepress/ contains the VuePress configuration and templates.
• /data/docs/ contains a checkout of the Markdown files with the actual documentation.
• /data/dist/ contains a build (PHP + generated HTML + PDF files) after running composer run build.

Configuration files for Composer, npm, Docker, Git, tests and linters are placed in the root directory.

Example request flow

In this exampel we'll be editing myfile.md.

• The user visits /myfile.html, which contains the VuePress frontend application.
• The user presses the "Edit this page" button.
• The frontend calls /api/v1/auth to check if the user is logged in.
  • If the user is not logged in, the API call returns a redirectUrl where the user should be redirected to log in.
  • After the login the user will be redirected back to the editor page and this flow starts over again.
• The frontend calls /api/v1/lock to acquire a lock to edit the file.
  • If the lock cannot be acquired, a error is shown informing the user someone else is currently editing the file.
• The frontend loads /myfile.md using a GET call to retrieve the raw Markdown.
• The user can now edit the page using the editor.
  • If an image is inserted, for example cat.jpg, it is uploaded by the frontend using a PUT-request to /images/cat.jpg, which redirects to the final URL where the image can be accessed.
  • As long as the user is still editing, the frontend periodically calls /api/v1/lock to renew the lock on the file.
• Once the user presses "Save", the frontend does a PUT to /myfile.md to save the modified contents.
  • The backend commits this content to Git, together with any images that were uploaded and referenced in the Markdown.
• The frontend calls /api/v1/unlock to unlock the file so others may edit it.
• The frontend notifies the user that his/her changes will be visible in a few moments once the new VuePress build has finished.

Production deployment

In production a GitHub machine user is used for committing and pushing changes to the www-documentation repository, as well as pulling the latest code and documentation from GitHub and deploying it to the production web server.

Note for developers

Always aim to leave the code in a better state than you found it in.

All new functionality should have test coverage and commits should be linted, which you can check with the composer test, npm test, composer lint and npm run lint commands. Some linting issues may be resolved automatically using composer fix and npm run fix.