Labs Applicant Portal

This is a monorepo containing both the server and client code for the ZAP Applicant Portal.

Prerequisite Tools

• Git
• Node.js (with npm)
• Ember CLI
• Yarn

Prerequisite SSL Setup for Local Development

In order for cookies to work across both the client and the server during local development, we must have SSL setup for our development environment.

Why is this necessary?

Google Chrome is beginning to enforce some restrictions on particular uses of cookies in cross-origin contexts. In our case, our server provides a cookie from one domain and is expected to be sent across subsequent requests via another. The only way to simulate this behavior as it works on a production environment is to run our local development servers with SSL enabled.

Steps to setup SSL locally

1. Clone this repo and follow the steps in its README: https://github.com/NYCPlanning/local-cert-generator

2. Note that Step 1 generates two files in the local-cert-generator repo: server.key and server.crt. Later, you will need to copy/paste these files into the labs-applicant-portal repo to run the application (Steps 2 and 3 under "Running the App").

3. Open up your hosts file on your machine with admin permissions: /etc/hosts. For example, sudo vim /etc/hosts

4. Add the following line: 127.0.0.1 local.planninglabs.nyc

Running the App

Once you have SSL enabled...

note: the client and server each run on their own node version, independent of each other. Refer to the .nvmrc of their respective folders to determine the appropriate node verion.

1. Clone labs-applicant-portal to your computer.
2. Navigate into the server folder.
   • Create the development.env file using variables stored on 1Password.
   • Copy the server.key and server.crt files from your local-cert-generator repo and paste both files into the labs-applicant-portal/server/ssl/ folder.
   • Activate the compatible node version nvm use
   • Run yarn to install dependencies for the server.
   • Run yarn run start:dev to start a development server
3. Open a new terminal and navigate into the client folder.
   • Copy the server.key and server.crt files from your local-cert-generator repo and paste both files into the labs-applicant-portal/client/ssl/ folder.
   • Activate the compatible node version nvm use
   • Run yarn to install dependencies for the client.
   • Run yarn start:dev to start a development server

Pre-commit linting and testing

The client and server application node versions have become out of sync with each other. Consequently, the pre-commit hooks have been turned off until both the server and client are on the same node version.

Husky is designed to use the node version set in the terminal PATH at the time the command is run. Whichever node version the developer chooses will be the one that the both the client and server are tested against. This can lead to weird cases where the client or server passes in the environment its developed for but fails in the environment where its tests are run.

As the hooks have been disabled, please take care to run linting and testing scripts for the server and client before commiting. These scripts are documented in their respective package.json files.

Maintenance Mode

To enable "maintenance mode", set two environment variables in the frontend (Netlify) build environment:

MAINTENANCE_START='06/28/2021 19:00' MAINTENANCE_END='06/29/2021 19:00'

Use the date format in the example above. This will warn of upcoming maintenance (if the start date is in the future), disable the login, and disappear once the end period has passed.