Fauna

Fauna is an application that allows students to get feedback on their essay whilst writing. For this, Fauna uses the GPT-4 API.

Development

To set up a local development environment, execute the following steps on your local device:

1. Clone the project using Git
2. Install the Node dependencies by running npm install (This requires NodeJS to be installed on your device)
3. Create a .env file with the required environment variables (See Environment Variables)
4. Start the local Docker environment by running docker compose -f docker-compose.local.yml up -d (This starts a local PostgreSQL database) (This requires Docker to be installed on your device)
5. Run database migrations by running npx prisma migrate deploy
6. Start the development environment by running npm run dev

After you finish, you can shut down the database by running docker compose -f docker-compose.local.yml down

Deployment

To deploy the application to production, execute the following steps on the server:

1. Clone or pull the latest version of the project using Git
2. Create a .env file with the required environment variables, if it does not exist already (See Environment Variables)
3. If the application is already running, stop the application by running docker compose -f docker-compose.production.yml down
4. Build the latest production image by running docker compose -f docker-compose.production.yml build (This requires Docker to be installed on your device)
5. Start production image by running docker compose -f docker-compose.production.yml up -d

Environment variables

The Fauna application requires the environment variables below to be set. This can be done by adding them to the .env file.

DOMAIN="fauna.socsci.ru.nl"
DATABASE_URL="postgresql://postgres:PASSWORDHERE@localhost:5432/postgres?schema=public"
DATABASE_PASSWORD="PASSWORDHERE"
AUTH_SECRET="AUTHSECRETHERE"
OPENAI_API_KEY="OPENAIAPIKEYHERE"

Replace all occurances of PASSWORDHERE with a secure password. This password is used for connecting to the database.

Replace AUTHSECRETHERE with a secret key. This key is used to sign authentication tokens.

Replace OPENAIAPIKEYHERE with your OpenAI API key. This API key can be obtained from the OpenAI Platform Dashboard.