valtech_shortie - valte.ch

Valtech URL shortening service.

TL;DR

• Production: http://valte.ch - admin: http://valte.ch/admin
• Stage: http://stage.valte.ch - admin: http://stage.valte.ch/admin

Technical stuff

This list isn't exhaustive, but should give you an idea of the overall architecture.

Languages/tools/frameworks

General

• JavaScript
• TypeScript (http://www.typescriptlang.org/)
• HTML 5
• CSS 3
• Grunt (task runner) (http://gruntjs.com/)
• JSHint (JavaScript linter) (http://www.jshint.com/)
• Browserify (http://browserify.org/)
  • (Bundles CommonJS modules into AMD modules for the browser)
• Concat (https://github.com/knicklabs/node-concat)
  • (Simple tool for concatenating files. Used for CSS bundling.)

Frontend

• Bootstrap 3 (http://getbootstrap.com/)
• Knockout (http://knockoutjs.com/)
• jQuery (http://jquery.org/)
  • (Only explicitly used for making AJAX calls to the REST API)
• Underscore.js (http://underscorejs.org/)

Backend

• Node.JS (http://nodejs.org/)
• Express web framework (http://expressjs.com/)
• Jade templating engine (http://jade-lang.com/)
• Winston logging library (https://github.com/flatiron/winston)
• Underscore.js (http://underscorejs.org/)
• MongoDB (http://www.mongodb.org)
• NeDB (https://github.com/louischatriot/nedb)
  • (embedded database used for unit tests)
• client-sessions (https://github.com/mozilla/node-client-sessions)
  • (middleware for creating encrypted session cookies)
• New Relic (http://www.newrelic.com/)
  • (cloud service for performance metrics)
• TBD: Logentries (http://logentries.com/)
  • (cloud service for parsing/managing logs - currently only under evaluation...)

Test frameworks

• Mocha (http://visionmedia.github.io/mocha/) for BDD/unit testing
• Chai (https://chaijs.com/) for assertions
• Sinon (https://sinonjs.org/) for mocking
• Supertest (https://github.com/visionmedia/supertest) for testing HTTP requests

Admin

Go to /admin and login using Valtech IDP. You can administer existing URLs and add new ones.

API

TODO. Will require an "application key + secret". POST, PUT and DELETE. JSON data.

Deployment

valtech_shortie is deployed with our internal TeamCity instance: http://bob.valtech.se.

• Branch master is automatically deployed to production.
• Branch develop is automatically deployed to stage.

If TeamCity does not trigger a build for a branch (e.g. after merge to master), trigger one yourself (by pressing the ... next to "Run" and then choosing branch).

The application is deployed to Azure. The azure-site-names are:

• Production: http://valtech-shortie.azurewebsites.net
• Stage: http://stage-valtech-shortie.azurewebsites.net

The MongoDB databases are located at MongoHQ. Ask IT for access.

Dev

Creating a local environment with Vagrant

This project is setup with Vagrant, to make it easy to get up and running. To create a VM with a local development environment using Vagrant, you need the following software installed on your host machine:

• Vagrant (http://vagrantup.com)
• VirtualBox (https://www.virtualbox.org/)
• nfsd - see https://docs.vagrantup.com/v2/synced-folders/nfs.html
  • sudo apt-get install nfs-kernel-server # Ubuntu 14.04

Create, provision and bootstrap the Vagrant box like this:

vagrant up
vagrant ssh

You are now inside a VM setup for development, and can skip the manual install steps.

Manual install

For all platforms

• Node.js: http://nodejs.org/ (use official installer)
• Grunt: npm install -g grunt grunt-cli
• MongoDB
  • Mac OS X: brew install mongodb and run it with mongod
  • Windows: Download, unzip somewhere (e.g. C:\mongodb), and run from a terminal with something like C:\mongodb\bin\mongod.exe --dbpath C:\mongodb\data --rest

For Windows development with Visual Studio

• Visual Studio 2013
• Node.js Tools for Visual Studio: https://nodejstools.codeplex.com/

Running

(First time - done automatically as part of the Vagrant bootstrap process)

This will install all required Node modules.

npm install

From CLI

grunt
node server.js

With grunt watch and node-supervisor

Tab A:

grunt default watch

Tab B:

supervisor server.js

Debugging with node-inspector

grunt
node-debug server.js

Running (and debugging) with Visual Studio 2013

Run Grunt tasks.

Press F5. :-)