big boring system

Feel like contributing?

Please review https://github.com/bigboringsystem/bigboringsystem/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md

Setup

After cloning the repo, install dependencies and copy the local configuration file:

npm install
cp local.json-dist local.json

Create a Twilio account. After you create it, go to https://www.twilio.com/user/account/ to get the SID and Auth Token. Enter these into local.json

Make sure that twilioNumber in local.json is the full number obtained from Twilio including the country code. For example, a United States based number needs to be prefixed by '1' and the area code, i.e. "1NNNNNNNNNN".

Then start the server:

npm start

Visit http://localhost:3000 in your browser.

Development Setup

If you are trying to set up b.b.s. for local development only, you can use npm run dev instead of npm start to bypass certain requirements. For instance:

• You won't need to set up Twilio credentials at all
• In fact, you don't even need to have a local.json file. Dev mode will just use some simple defaults if you don't create one.
• To log into the system, you can go directly to /authenticate and type in the PIN that's listed on the page for you. Or enter a valid-looking phone number on the home page to get to /authenticate, but you'll always use the listed dummy dev PIN.

Ops

Make sure to add yourself as an op in local.json by entering your UID. You can find this on your http://localhost:3000/profile page near the top.

This version of Big Boring System intentionally has no threading. Check this post for more details.

Tests

npm test

OMG DOCKER

If you want to deploy your bbs in less than 10 minutes it is fairly trivial with docker! A really simple way to get started is by using the docker application image on Digital Ocean.

Clone this repo, and create a local.json.

Build a container:

docker build -t bbs-container .

Run the container:

docker run -d -p 80:3000 --name bbs -v $PWD/db:/db bbs-container

-d runs the container as a daemon process

-p 80:3000 binds port 3000 of the app to port 80 on our server

--name bbs a name we can use to refer to this process

-v $PWD/db:/db mount the db folder in our present working directory to the db folder used by the app (makes database persistent)

bbs-container the name of the container to use

You can now easily stop and start this process with docker stop bbs && docker start bbs

If you make changes you will need to rebuild the container.