ULAB Website

This README documents the steps necessary to get the website up and running.

• The website is a Rails app running on Ruby 2.7.6 (check .ruby-version to confirm)

• Dependencies not installed by Bundler include:

  • PostgreSQL, which allows the app to manipulate PostgreSQL databases

    • On Mac, just download Postgres.app

    • On Windows and Linux, follow the instructions on the PostgreSQL website

  • Redis, for caching and job queues

    • On Mac, you can download Redis Server from the App Store

    • On Windows and Linux, follow the instructions on the Redis website

• Configuration

  • Create the databases for development and testing by running bin/rails db:create, repeat in production to create the production database

  • You can seed the database with sample data by running bin/rails db:seed—find the data used in db/seeds.rb

  • To run the test suite, run bin/rails test

  • In production, the app deploys a set of Docker containers using Docker Compose

• The website makes use of a variety of services when running

  • The app is deployed to a DigitalOcean droplet

  • Amazon S3 is used for cloud storage of images and documents

• CI (Contiguous Integration) services include:

  • GitHub Actions for running test suites automatically

  • Code Climate, which runs checks on code and monitors test coverage

• Services which allow the identification of problems with the live website include:

  • Skylight, which monitors requests and responses for slowness and other issues

  • Depfu, which checks for updated versions of dependencies

  • Bugsnag, which logs errors which the app reports and creates corresponding issues in this repo

  • Scout, which monitors resource usage

• The app deploys to a DigitalOcean droplet using Git hooks

  • Before any PR is merged, all GitHub actions must succeed

  • To deploy the app, push to deploy@ssh.ulab.org.uk:ulab-website-production. The server then runs docker-compose up --build, which rebuilds and deploys the Docker containers.