Rowe GBBO Sweepscake application

Before you start

The application can be developed and built on Windows, Linux or MacOS.

These technologies are required to run the application along with the minimum version required. They can be installed within a Docker containerised environment, or alternatively on the host machine directly.

• PHP - 8.1
• Composer - 2.5.8
• PostgreSQL - 14.1
• NodeJS - 16.13.2
• Suitable IDE

The project is written in PHP and was developed using both PHP Storm and Visual Studio Code as IDEs.

How to configure and deploy the project

Important: Do not commit the contents of the .env file to version control - it often contains account credentials and other sensitive information

Start by cloning the app from the git repository.

App Configuration

The app must be configured by creating a .env file at the root of the project. There is an example file .env.example at the root of the project which can be copied, renamed, and tweaked.

This following environment variables should be set:

Environment Variable	Type	Description
DB_CONNECTION	String	Type of database, likely pgsql
DB_HOST	String	Hostname, likely localhost
DB_PORT	int	Database port number
DB_DATABASE	String	Database name
DB_USERNAME	String	Database user username
DB_PASSWORD	String	Database user password
DB_SCHEMA	String	Schema name
MAIL_MAILER	String
MAIL_HOST	String	Hostname, likely localhost
MAIL_PORT	String	Mail server port
MAIL_USERNAME	String	Mail server username
MAIL_PASSWORD	String	Mail server username
MAIL_ENCRYPTION	String
MAIL_FROM_ADDRESS	String	Email address to use as sender email
MAIL_FROM_NAME	String	From name to use in sender email
SEEDER_ADMIN_PASSWORD	String
SEEDER_USER_PASSWORD	String
SEEDER_USERS_EMAIL_DOMAIN	String
SEEDER_USERS_2021	String	Comma separated list mapping users to bakers
SEEDER_USERS_2022_1	String	Comma separated list mapping users to bakers
SEEDER_USERS_2022_2	String	Comma separated list mapping users to bakers

Database Migrations

To run the database migrations, enter the following command in the terminal. Run this command every time changes to the migrations are made.

php artisan migrate

To view the currently applied migrations, run:

php artisan migrate:status

Compiling CSS and Javascript

Installing the JavaScript dependencies:

npm install

The app stylesheets and javascript needs to be compiled when the app is first run, every time a new branch is checked out, or a styling change is made.

If stylesheets/javascript are not being changed then they can be compiled once without recompiling every time a change is made:

npm run build

However, if styles or javascript are being tweaked, the following can be run to recompile every time a change is made:

npm run dev

If for any reason the content cannot be served on another port using the dev command above, for example the content security policy getting in the way, the following command can be run to recompile the assets evert time a change is made.

npm run watch Note: This is much slower to run compared to the above command.

For production environments, to create a compressed app.css file, use this:

npm run prod

When using PHP Storm IDE this can be configured as a Run Configuration.

Running the App Locally

To run the app locally run the following command at the project route in the terminal.

php artisan serve

When using PHP Storm IDE this can be configured as a Run Configuration.

If run with default settings then this will be accessible on

http://localhost:8000/

Local PostGIS database

Running postgres using a docker container:

docker run --name postgres -i -t -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=<password> -p 5432:5432 postgres

Local email server

The application makes use of emails for user registration, password reset and notification. As such is it convenient in a local development environment to have a development SMTP server running. smtp4dev (see https://github.com/rnwood/smtp4dev) works well.

Running smtp4dev using a docker container:

docker run -p 3000:80 -p 25:25 -d --name smtp4dev rnwood/smtp4dev