Setting up a local development environment

Project structure

This project uses a monorepo structure, with concerns split into separate Node modules located in the /packages folder:

Module	Purpose
indiekit	Coordinating functions and the Express web server.
frontend	Frontend component library, used for the application interface.
error	Error handling for the core module and plug-ins.
create-indiekit	Project initialiser, used when running npm create indiekit.
endpoint-*	Application endpoint plug-ins.
post-type-*	Post type plug-ins.
preset-*	Publication preset plug-ins.
store-*	Content store plug-ins.
syndicator-*	Syndicator plug-ins.

Helper functions used in tests are in the /helpers folder.

Project architecture

Indiekit uses the Express server framework.

Configuration defaults get merged with any user-defined values (Indiekit uses cosmiconfig to find and load a configuration object).

Plug-ins listed under the plugins array are then loaded and interrogated for known API methods, which further update the configuration.

Express waits for a resolved configuration file before starting the server.

Running locally

To run the server locally, first install its dependencies:

npm install

The provided configuration file allows some options to be assigned using environment variables.

Create an .env file in the root of the project, for example:

# Required
PUBLICATION_URL="https://example.com"

# Database connection string URI (optional)
MONGO_URL="mongodb://127.0.0.1:27017"

# Test saving files to a content store on GitHub (optional)
GITHUB_USER="username"
GITHUB_REPO="indiekit-test"
GITHUB_BRANCH="main"
GITHUB_TOKEN="12345abcde"

# Test syndicating content to a Mastodon server (optional)
MASTODON_URL="https://example.social"
MASTODON_USER="indiekit-test"
MASTODON_ACCESS_TOKEN="12345abcde"

You can then start the server:

npm start

To automatically restart the server whenever a file change is detected, use:

npm run dev

To enable authentication, use the production flag:

npm run dev --production

Tests

The project uses both unit and integration tests. Run tests using the following command:

npm test

To run an individual test, use node followed by the path to the test. For example:

node packages/indiekit/test/index.js

Test coverage

The project aims to achieve close to 100% test coverage. You can check code coverage by running the following command:

npm run test:coverage

Linting

Consistent and high-quality code is maintained using Prettier with ESLint used to check JavaScript files and Stylelint used to check CSS stylesheets.

You can check that any changes use the preferred code style by running the following command:

npm run lint

You automatically fix any issues by running the following command:

npm run lint:fix