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ProjX Portal

Getting Set Up

Requirements

  1. Install (if not already):

MongoDB

  1. In a terminal, run
$ mongod

If you get permissions errors, you may need to use $ sudo mongod. If the command is not recognized, you will need to add the Mongo bin folder to your path, using this: https://stackoverflow.com/a/41507803. You probably also need to create the /data/db folder. If you're on a Mac, you may need to create the folder elsewhere and specify the new path, e.g. using $ mongod --dbpath=/Users/user/data/db instead.

  1. In another terminal, run
$ mongo

This should give you a shell prompt.

  1. In the mongo shell, create the "projx" database.
> use projx
  1. Create the "users" collection in the "projx" database.
> db.createCollection("users")
  1. Create your own user profile with an email address and full name:
>  db.users.insert({ "email": "[email protected]", "name": "Your Name", "isAdmin": true })
  1. Leave the mongo shell. But leave mongod running!
> exit

Node

  1. Clone the repo.
$ git clone https://github.com/techx/projx-web.git
$ cd projx-web
  1. Make sure you have npm installed (it should come with node). Install all the necessary dependencies.
$ npm install
  1. Install gulp.
$ npm install -g gulp
  1. Create a file called config.json. (Note: If you are on Windows make sure your file extensions are correct.) This file is not committed and stores instance-specific settings. Copy and paste the following into that file, and change "devEmail" and "devName".
{
    "devEmail": "[email protected]",
    "devName": "Your Name",
    "mongoUri": "mongodb://localhost:27017/projx",
    "loginUrl": "localhost:5000/api/user/login",
    "scriptsUsername": "vfazel",
    "scriptsPath": "/projx",
    "authSecret": "insert_some_secret_here",
    "cookieSecret": "insert_secret_here",
    "appsOpen": true,
    "openDate": "February 6, 2021",
    "deadline": "11:59pm Sunday, February 23",
    "resumeLink": "url_to_submit_resumes",
    "cycle": "Spring 2021",
    "development": true,
    "resumeSecretKey": "blah"
}

[Possibly deprecated] Note: resumeSecretKey should match PORTAL_SECRET in the ProjX resume upload app.

  1. For local development, just use gulp. (Make sure mongod is still running in a different terminal.)
$ gulp

Production

The website is hosted on an AWS box. To access the box, see TechX DevOps Wiki instructions. Note that if you are not on MIT Wifi, you will need to connect to the MIT VPN via the Cisco client.

The production system uses the forever package to monitor the process.

$ node bin/www

or

$ forever start bin/www

and

$ forever list
$ forever stop [index]

Opening and Closing Apps

  1. In config.json, change the following parameters:
    • appsOpen - this is a Boolean (true or false)
    • openDate - the date applications open(ed)
    • deadline - the date applications are due
    • resumeLink - Dropbox link for submitting applications
    • cycle - name of the application cycle

Each application cycle, you will need to update appsOpen twice and each of the other parameters once.

  1. After you have changed everything, you need to restart the node app. Locate the node process and terminate it.
$ ps aux | grep projx
$ kill <PROCESS_ID>
  1. If the monitoring system doesn't automatically restart it, then restart with $ node bin/www.

Note on gulp 3 and node 12

tl;dr You need to checkout the upstream version of npm-shrinkwrap.json each time you want to rerun npm install.

This project uses gulp v3, which has been causing issues with newer versions of node. The npm-shrinkwrap.json file used here as a workaround to be able to use both together, per the fix from Tim Kamanin (referenced in this answer on SO).

As intended, npm-shrinkwrap.json is modified when npm install is run. Unfortunately for us, rerunning npm install afterwards, even with the same npm-shrinkwrap.json (or even changing it to a package-lock.json), somehow installs the wrong set of package versions once again, and we get issues with gulp yet again.

So in case you really need to npm install multiple times, the current workaround is to not commit changes to npm-shrinkwrap.json after the initial commit, and to replace its contents with this each time before you need to npm install again.

(The long-term fix, probably, in case someone wants to work on it, would be to update gulp from v3 to v4. This in itself doesn't take long at all. But you would just need to make sure that everything on the AWS boxes is also up to date and working correctly with a new setup.)