Developer Guide

Intro

Here you can find a guide on how to contribute to the Discourse Analysis Tool Suite (DATS) as a developer.

The DATS is developed as a client-server application and gets deployed via docker-compose. Since backend and frontend development is very different, this guide is split in two.

The setup described here uses docker compose to run auxiliary software like PostgreSQL, Redis etc., while running the backend and/or frontend outside of docker in a more traditional development environment.

Preparations

1. Clone this repository git clone https://github.com/uhh-lt/dats.git
2. Install the requirements

Requirements

• Linux machine, optionally with an Nvidia GPU
• Docker
• Conda (or Mamba)
• Node

Docker Guide

We start with setting-up the services running inside docker containers:

1. Configure the docker containers. In the docker directory, you will find a .env.example file to configure various settings. Start by making a copy of it: cp .env.example .env. Now modify the .env file accordingly:
   1. Change UID and GID to match user and group id of your current user. This will prevent permission problems with volumes mapping files into the container. You can find your users IDs with id.
   2. Change COMPOSE_PROJECT_NAME to prevent collisions with other docker compose projects running on the same machine.
   3. Change all values ending in _EXPOSED to configure the various ports your services will be available on, taking care to prevent conflicts with other services running on your machine. We will configure the backend later to access these ports.
   4. With COMPOSE_PROFILES you can change which services will be started. For development, we recommend to remove backend and frontend from this list. We won't need it because we will start the backend and frontend ourselves, outside of docker.
   5. We recommend to change all RAY_PROCESSING_DEVICE to 'cpu' for development.
   6. Use pwgen to create the JWT_SECRET
2. Run the script ./setup-folders.sh to automatically create directories for storing and caching ML models as well as uploaded documents.
3. Run docker compose up -d to start all docker containers. Use docker compose ps to check that all containers are running. On the first start, this will take quite a while, as the container will download some large AI models.

Backend Guide

Intro and Structure

The backend is written in Python and is organized in directories each responsible for different tasks.

• backend/src/api -> REST API endpoints consumed by the frontend (or other clients)
• backend/src/app/core -> core backend logic such as the data model, internal service modules, search and analysis functionality
• backend/src/app/docprepro -> document preprocessing logic
• backend/src/test -> unit, integration, and e2e tests
• backend/src/configs -> configuration files to customize the backend behavior (handle with care!)

Development Setup

Step-by-step instructions

1. Install dependencies with conda conda env create -f backend/environment.yml.
2. Activate the conda environment you created in the previous step: conda activate <your_env_name>
3. Tell the backend how to reach the various services running in docker. In backend/.env.example, you can find an example configuration. Make a copy of this config with cp .env.example .env. Next, set the _PORT settings to match the _EXPOSED ports from before in docker/.env. Change the REPO_ROOT string to point to the docker/backend_repo folder inside your repository. Finally, change the API_PORT.
4. (optional) Load the backend configuration into your shell using set -o allexport; source backend/.env; set +o allexport.
5. In VSCODE, navigate to 'Run and Debug' and launch 'Python: main.py'.

Building for Production With Docker

This section describes deploying the backend API to production.

One container is built for the backend API as well as the celery-background-jobs-worker as they share the same dependencies. The startup command (entrypoint) decides if the container is serving the API or running as a worker. The different entrypoints can be found at backend/src/*_entrypoint.sh, where every script corresponds to exactly one worker type. The backend source code is copied into the container, so are the config files in backend/src/configs, which can be altered to configure various settings.

This is what our release github action does:

1. Build docker container: docker build -f Dockerfile -t uhhlt/dwts_backend:{version}.
2. Push docker container: docker push uhhlt/dwts_backend:{version}

Data Model

The Data Model (DM) (located at backend/src/app/core/data/) is the core of the DATS and represents all it's entities. The DM is based on sqlalchemy and pydantic. Although sqlalchemy is (mostly) database agnostic, the intended database for the DATS DM is PostgreSQL.

The entities (i.e. database tables) are based on sqlalchemy and are located in backend/src/app/core/data/orm -- ORM stands for Object-Relational Mapping and defines the bridge between python classes and objects and the database. To perform Create-Read-Update-Delete (CRUD) operations we use the interfaces defined in backend/src/app/core/data/crud. To transfer entities between the frontend and the backend (and also often internally in the backend) we make use the DTOs (Data Transfer Objects) based on pydantic, which are located in backend/src/app/core/data/dto.

How to extend the Data Model

In this guide, you will learn all steps necessary to extend the DWTS Data Model.

Please always have a look at implementations of other existing entities for examples and coding/naming conventions!

Step 1: Define the ORM

To define the ORM, first create a new file in backend/src/app/core/data/orm. For examples and further help, have a look at other files defined in this directory and the sqlalchemy documentation.

If you need an ObjectHandle (basically a pointer) for that entity (e.g. to enable Memos for that entity), you also have to extend the ObjectHandleORM accordingly.

Step 2: Register the ORM and create a migration

To register the ORM, import the class in the import_all_orms module (backend/src/app/core/data/db/import_all_orms.py). Then tell alembic to look at that file and generate a migration for models that are not present in the database yet. In VSCODE, navigate to

alembic revision --autogenerate -m "short description"

Step 3: Define the DTOs

To define the DTOs, first, create a new file in backend/src/app/core/data/dto with the same filename as the ORM file. In that file, add the DTOs as separate classes that inherit from each other (if possible).

Step 4: Implement CRUD

To implement the CRUD object, first, create a new file in backend/src/app/core/data/crud with the same filename as the ORM and DTO file. In that file, create a CRUD class that inherits from CRUDBase with the DTOs from the previous step. This already provides basic CRUD operations. If you need to customize or add operations, implement the respective methods in this class.

Frontend Guide

Intro and Structure

The frontend is written in TypeScript using React, bootstrapped with Create React App. It is organized in directories each responsible for different tasks.

• frontend/src/api -> custom TanStack Query hooks to communicate with the backend via the automatically generated API client in openapi.
• frontend/src/components -> reusable UI components
• frontend/src/features -> components that implement logic and access the API to build a feature. These features are used across the app and are not specific to a certain route.
• frontend/src/layouts -> different page layouts used by the routing library.
• frontend/src/plugins -> configuration files to customize the behavior of various plugins.
• frontend/src/router -> configuration of the React Router.
• frontend/src/store -> configuration of the global store - Redux Toolkit.
• frontend/src/view -> the main directory of the app. Every subfolder corresponds to a route. All features specific only to the corresponding route are implemented here.

Development Setup

Requirements

• Linux machine with Nvidia GPU
• Docker
• Node v18

Step-by-step instructions

1. Refer to the backend section to set up services running inside docker.
2. Install dependencies with npm cd frontend && npm install -f.
3. Configure the frontend. In frontend/.env.development, configure REACT_APP_SERVER and REACT_APP_CONTENT with the values from the previous step (API_EXPOSED and CONTENT_SERVER_EXPOSED).
4. Load the frontend configuration into your current shell using set -o allexport; source .env.development; set +o allexport.
5. Run npm start to start the frontend. Check http://localhost:3030 to see if everything is working.

Build for Production With Docker

When deploying the frontend, the React code is first bundled and then served via an NGINX web server. In production mode, the NGINX web server also acts as a reverse proxy for communication with the backend. frontend/.env.production/ is configured to make the backend api available at /api and the content server available at /content. The matching configuration of the NGINX web server is located at /docker/nginx.conf.

1. Build docker container: docker build -f Dockerfile -t uhhlt/dwts_frontend:latest .
2. (optional) Push docker container: docker push uhhlt/dwts_frontend:latest

Communication with the backend

The backend uses FastAPI to serve an accessible API that follows the OpenAPI standard. We consume this API by automatically generating an OpenAPI client with OpenAPI Typescript Codegen and build hooks around that with TanStack Query, that can be conveniently used in all components.

In case the backend is updated and offers new API endpoints, the following steps must be performed to make them available in the frontend:

1. Download the new OpenAPI specification of the backend. Run npm run update-api. You probably have to set the correct backend API_PORT in frontend/package.json scripts > update-api for this to work.
2. Generate the new client. Run npm run generate-dev. This command deletes everything in frontend/src/api/openapi, generates new code, and formats it with prettier.
3. Implement a new Hook in frontend/src/api.

Deployment

Docker-compose is used to orchestrate the frontend, API, celery workers databases and other services that are used in the D-WISE Tool Suite.

1. Configure ports and credentials in /docker/.env
2. (optional) Note the environment variable DWISE_BACKEND_CONFIG, which links to backend/src/configs/default_localhost_dev.yaml per default, additional adjustments can be made.
3. Set-up the folder structure with sh /docker/setup-folders.sh. This script creates models_cache for storing various ML models, spacy_models for storing various spaCy models for different languages, backend_repo for storing uploaded documents and tika that stores Java executables for Apache TIKA.
4. Deploy the application with docker compose up -d. Check with docker compose ps that all containers are running.

Versioning

We use Semantic Versioning as explained below:

Given a version number MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH, increment the:

1. MAJOR version when you make incompatible API changes
2. MINOR version when you add functionality in a backward compatible manner
3. PATCH version when you make backward compatible bug fixes

Additional labels for pre-release and build metadata are available as extensions to the MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH format.

For reference, see https://semver.org/.

Releasing a New Version

In the root of the repository, run:

bin/release.sh 1.0.3

This will update all necessary files, create a commit and matching tag, and push it. The github action will then take care of building containers and creating a github release.