queue

Running locally in dev mode:

• Clone the repository
• Install node and npm
• Install sqlite3: npm install sqlite3 in the queue directory
• Install dependencies: npm install in the queue directory
• In models/index.js, uncomment sequelize.sync({force: true})
  • Comment this line after the first run if you do not want databases to be dropped and rebuilt on startup
• Start the server: npm run dev
  • Access the queue from a browser at localhost:3000

Multiple users in dev mode

In production, all auth is done my Shibboleth, and we just read out of the eppn header to get a student's identity. In dev mode, we still want to be able to test with multiple users (for instance, to assert that user roles work correctly, or to ensue that syncing between multiple clients works correctly). To achieve that, we use express-session to track users across page reloads. By default, you will assume the role of dev, an admin user. To force a different user, you can append ?forceuser=NETID to any URL (this creates a user NETID if needed). All future requests from that browser will be associated with that user, and you can add it to course staff, etc. like a normal user.

To test with multiple users at the same time, you can open up multiple browsers, or use multiple incognito windows.

Production config

Several configuration options are exposed via environment variables:

• PORT: controls which port the app will be served from.
• BASE_URL: allows the app to be served from somewhere other than the server root. This affects asset and API routes, websocket endpoints, generated links, and more. Note that for this to work effectively, the app must still receive the base URL as part of the request; this is important if the app is reverse-proxied behind Apache. For instance, if the queue is served from /my/path/, then you should run with BASE_URL=/my/path (note the lack of trailing slash), and a request for queue 1 should be received as /my/path/queue/1.