ALICE

Aggregate Line Inspector / Collaborative Editor
A front end tool allowing reviewing and editing of Zooniverse transcription data.

Production: https://alice.zooniverse.org
Staging: https://alice.preview.zooniverse.org

Please refer to the wiki for more detailed information.

Status

This project is currently in beta testing.

Getting Started

This project uses Yarn or Docker to get the app up and running

Yarn

• yarn install to install package dependencies
• yarn test to run all tests within the repo
• yarn storybook to open a Storybook viewer at http://localhost:6006 to view components in isolation
• yarn start to open a staging version of the site at https://localhost:3000. Use https://local.zooniverse.org:3000 to log in via the Panoptes API (instructions.)

Docker

• docker-compose up to run the development app at http://localhost:3000 and start storybook at http://localhost:6006
• docker-compose down to stop the dev containers
• docker-compose run --rm dev test to run the tests

Deployment

Deployment is handled by Github Action. Both staging and production deployment can be run ad hoc in the actions tab as needed if you have the appropriate permissions on the repository.

Environment Variables

React scripts (aka Create-React-App or CRA) handles the NODE_ENV for us:

There is also a built-in environment variable called NODE_ENV. You can read it from process.env.NODE_ENV. When you run npm start, it is always equal to 'development', when you run npm test it is always equal to 'test', and when you run npm run build to make a production bundle, it is always equal to 'production'. You cannot override NODE_ENV manually. This prevents developers from accidentally deploying a slow development build to production.

Because of this, if we want to deploy a staging app that builds like production, but uses the Panoptes API staging server, then we would either have to eject and manually manage the NODE_ENV or somehow set to use the staging API by another means. Ejecting is undesirable because its impact would mean we would have to manually configure additional things that CRA handles for us and this would defeat the benefit of using CRA.

Instead, another environment variable, REACT_APP_ENV set to development is used when doing a staging deployment. The panoptes-javascript-client was updated to check for this environment variable in addition to what its already set to do and give preference to it before NODE_ENV. This enables us to set the client to use the staging API and not have to manage NODE_ENV and eject this app.

Staging

On merge to master, a Github Action is triggered to deploy to staging to https://alice.preview.zooniverse.org.

Production

Production deployments are triggered by an update to which commit the production-release tag is pointed to. This tag should be updated via chat ops and then a Github Action will run that builds and uploads the files to our cloud provider found at https://alice.zooniverse.org.