A proof of concept for an improved Alakajam! site architecture. The goal is to eventually expand it into a new major version of the website.

Initial setup

1. Install dependencies: npm install && npm install -g typescript tslint
2. Build the server: npm build
3. Start: npm start

Developer tools

Install dependencies: npm install -g typescript ts-node-dev tslint typedoc webpack-cli typeorm

• npm run build:watch: Watches the server sources to build them automatically.
• npm run start:watch: Starts the server, manages building/restarting automatically.
• npm run lint: Checks the sources for errors, and fixes them if possible. Launched automatically upon committing. (Disabled for now due to issues on Windows)
• npm run typedoc: Generates a static documentation site in dist/docs/
• npm run debug: Launches the server in debug mode. Type about:inspect in a Chrome browser and it should let you connect to your Node target.
• npm run migration:run: Migrates the DB to the latest version.
• npm run migration:revert: Reverts the latest DB migration.
• webpack-cli --config webpack.development.js: Build the client-side JS/CSS manually.

Debugging with Visual Studio Code

Put this in your .vscode/launch.json:

{
  "version": "0.2.0",
  "configurations": [
    {
      "name": "Debug Alakajam!",
      "type": "node",
      "request": "launch",
      "args": ["${workspaceFolder}\\server\\index.ts", "patch-ormconfig-ts-node"],
      "runtimeArgs": ["--nolazy", "-r", "ts-node/register", "-r", "tsconfig-paths/register"],
      "sourceMaps": true,
      "cwd": "${workspaceRoot}",
      "protocol": "inspector",
    }
  ]
}

Design notes

Little TODOs

• Test more advanced use cases in services (to ensure morph relations are still manageable the current way)
• Find a way to optimize Webpack builds (why does rebuilding CSS currently imply rebuilding the TypeScript? could we put the libraries in a different build?). Or should we remove CSS from Webpack?

Big TODOs

• Switch to TypeScript
• Improve and make TypeScript-compatible the models code (by either more integration to Bookshelf, ie. extending BaseModel, or switching from Bookshelf to another ORM like TypeORM or Sequelize)
• Database migrations (switch to TypeORM)
• Consider organizing folders by subject (entry, post, etc.) more than just by layer
• Better organization of service layers
• Easier testing, better test coverage
• Put tests in CI
• [WIP!] Set up improved toolchain for JS/CSS build (faster build in development, faster boot in production)
• [WIP!] Improve the files layout (data/uploads folders, static assets in/out folders, template macros, explode core/models.js)
• [WIP!] Get rid of the unmaintained Bootflat
• [WIP!] Remove business logic from controllers (possibly even not expose the models?) / Consistent pattern for forms handling
• [WIP!] Make template development easier (comment conventions, in-page tool to explore available context)
• Try simplifying dependencies (client-side: code editors, icons, etc.)
• Use native events to solve some spagetthi code (eg. attaching entries to posts, sync'ing tournament scores etc.)
• Look into Nest for good practices (eg. using class-validator for form validation)
• Have a framework folder encapsulate the more complex, non-Alakajam specific technical stuff

Code upgrade

• promisify-node can be replaced with the now native util.promisify()
• Rename .css files to .pcss for correct code highlighting (in Visual Studio Code in particular)

Won't do for now

• Refactor event status flags (use feature flags - possibly controlled by event states - rather than toggle features directly with states, also consider embedding them in a single JSON field)
• Wiki documentation (will upgrade docs when V2 is ready)

Troubleshooting

• Error on launch: EPERM: operation not permitted, mkdir '...\alakajam-poc\node_modules\@types

This can happen on Windows on older Node versions. Upgrade Node (not just npm) to fix this.