PolicyEngine API

This is the official back-end service of PolicyEngine, a non-profit with the mission of computing the impact of public policy for the world.

Prerequisites

Running or editing the API locally will require a Python virtual environment, either through the Python venv command or a secondary package like conda. For more information on how to do this, check out the documentation for venv here and this overview blog post for conda here.

Contributing

Choosing an Issue

All of our code changes are made against a GitHub issue. If you're new to the project, go to Issues and search for good first issues label: "good first issue".

Currently, we don't typically assign contributors. If you see an open issue that no one's opened a PR against, it's all yours! Feel free to make some edits, then open a PR, as described below.

Setting Up

1. Fork the repo

https://github.com/PolicyEngine/policyengine-api/fork

2. Activate your virtual environment

3. Install dependencies

make install

4. Start a server on localhost to see your changes

make debug

Now you're ready to start developing!

Testing, Formatting, Changelogging

You've finished your contribution, but now what? Before opening a PR, we ask contributors to do three things.

Step 1: Testing

To test your changes against our series of automated tests, run

make debug-test

If testing anything anything that utilizes Redis (unlikely) or the API's service workers (very unlikely), you'll also need to run one of the following:

redis-server

or

python policyengine_api/worker.py

NOTE: Running the command make test will fail, as this command is utilized by the deployed app to run tests and requires passwords to the production database.

We also ask that you add tests for any new features or bug-fixes you add, so we can gradually build up the code coverage. Our tests are written in the Python standard, Pytest, and will be run again against the production environment, as well.

Step 2: Formatting

In addition to the tests, we use Black to lint our codebase, so before opening a pull request, Step 2 is to lint the code by running

make format

This will automatically format the code for you; no need to do anything else.

Step 3: Changelogging

Finally, we ask contributors to make it clear for our users what changes have been made by contributing to a changelog. This changelog is formatted in YAML and describes the changes you've made to the code. This should follow the below format:

- bump: {major, minor, patch}
  changes:
    {added, removed, changed, fixed}:
      - <variable or program>

For more info on the syntax, check out the semantic versioning docs and keep a changelog.

Write your changelog info into the empty file called changelog_entry.yaml. When you open your PR, this will automatically be added to the overall changelog.

Opening a Pull Request

Now you've finished your contribution! Please open a pull request (PR) from your fork against the master branch. At times, it may take some time for the team to review your PR, especially for larger contributions, so please be patient--we will be sure to get to it.

In the first line of your PR, please make sure to include the following:

Fixes {issue_number}

This makes it much easier for us to maintain and prune our issue board.

Please try to be detailed in your PRs about the changes you made and why you made them. You may find yourself looking back at them for reference in the future, or needing insight about someone else's changes. Save yourself a conversation and write it all in the PR!

Here are some best practices for using Git.

When you're ready for review, switch the PR from Draft to Ready for review and add a contributor as a reviewer.

License

Distributed under the AGPL License. See LICENSE for more info.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Othneil Drew for his README template.