freeCodeCamp/tools/dashboard/docs

Local Setup

• Follow the steps below to get this running on your local machine

1. Copy .env

• Copy the sample.env file into .env. The command below will do that in the terminal if your CWD(current working directory) is the contribute folder.

cp probot/sample.env probot/.env

• If you do not want to populate the database with the freeCodeCamp PR's you can skip to step 6

2. Update .env

• Put your GitHub username in the GITHUB_USERNAME field of the .env file

3. Obtain GitHub Personal access token

• While on Github, click your profile icon > Settings
• Then click Developer settings > Personal access tokens
• Click Generate new token
• On the next page, give the token a name so you know what it’s for
• Scroll down to the bottom and click Generate token
• Copy the token string and paste it into the GITHUB_ACCESS_TOKEN field in the .env file. Note that you will not be able to see this token string on GitHub again

4. Create your own GitHub app

• While on GitHub, click your profile icon > Settings
• Then click developer settings > New GitHub app
• Fill in the name field with a name of your choice
• Fill in the Homepage URL field with the URL to the GitHub repository for your app. e.g. https://github.com/username/contribute
• In a new tab, go to https://smee.io/
• Click Start a new channel and copy the URL they give you. You can ignore the rest of the instructions on the smee.io page
• Paste the URL you copied into the WEBHOOK_PROXY_URL field of the .env file and the Webhook URL field of your new GitHub app
• Fill in the Webhook secret field on the GitHub app with a secret of your choice
• Put the same secret you just used in the WEBHOOK_SECRET field of the .env file
• Scroll to the bottom of your GitHub app page and click Create GitHub App
• On the next page, copy the App ID and paste it into the APP_ID field of the .env file
• Scroll to the bottom of this page and click Generate Private Key
• A popup menu will allow you to download the key file. Download it and put it in the probot folder

5. Run mongoDB

• Make sure a mongoDB instance is running by running the command below in the terminal.

mongod —dbpath=./database_folder

6. Start the program

• In a new terminal window or tab, run these three commands to start the program. Wait for one command to finish running before starting the next.

npm install
npm run build
npm run develop

• If you skipped steps 2-5, you can ignore the rest

7. Update the Database

• Run the command below to populate your local database with PR’s from the freeCodeCamp repo. Note that you must have the program running and mongoDB running.

node probot/server/tools/update-db.js

• This will take a while. If it stops running partway through, it's probably a timeout error. Run the command again and it should finish

Caveats & Notes

Local Ports when developing locally

Using npm run develop will start both the api server and the Create React App(Dashboard) in development mode. The api server runs on port 3001 and the React app runs on port 3000.

The one-off scripts will error out on actions performed by repository admins

For example, if an admin removes a label from a Pull Request, the script can not add that label back. This is usually because the script is acting on behalf of a non-admin user with write access. This is usually the case with the use of access tokens for scripts.

Setting up Cron jobs for Sweeper Scripts

For updating dashboard data we use PM2 like so:

pm2 start --no-autorestart probot/server/tools/update-db.js --cron "*/10 * * * *"

This will start the script in the "no restart" mode and re-run it every 10 minutes. A useful link to calculate a Cron expression: https://crontab.guru/every-10-minutes

Starting the express server (via probot)

pm2 start "npm start" --name "contribute-app"

Note: Start only one instance of this app, you can't have multiple probot apps running. Starting multiple instances will crash the app.