TeachLAFrontend

ACM Teach LA's Editor Frontend

This repository holds the frontend code for the ACM Teach LA online editor! Teach LA uses the editor to help teach LA students about Python, Web Development, and expose them to computer science!

Our editor is primarily developed with React + Redux, and uses a smattering of other Node packages. The project is actively developed and maintained by the ACM Teach LA Dev Team (part of ACM @ UCLA).

Want to find out more about ACM Teach LA, or join the developer team? Check out our website or shoot us an email at acmteachla@gmail.com.

Developer Setup

We use pnpm: pnpm does what npm does but is much more efficient. Recommended setup is as follows:

1. Follow installation instructions for pnpm here.
2. Open a new shell and verify that pnpm is installed by running pnpm --version.
3. Run pnpm env use --global lts to download the latest LTS version of Node.
4. Clone this repository and navigate to the project directory within your shell.
5. Run pnpm install to install all dependencies.
6. Test that everything works by running pnpm staging_start to start the development server.

There are actually two different ways to run the app locally on your machine - one that uses our staging backend server (as in step 6), and one where you'll run it locally. Usually, the staging server is totally fine to use, but having the backend makes more sense if you're working on a new feature or are editing the backend.

Connecting to a backend

Using the Staging Server (Recommended)

After following the Developer Setup, run:

$ pnpm staging_start

And voila! vite should automatically open a new browser window with the editor; give it a few seconds to start up and you should be good to go. You can also manually visit it on localhost:5173

Using a Local Server (Advanced)

Note This currently doesn't work.

Here, you'll run our backend on your local machine, which offers more flexibility; you can find more information on that here.

And in another terminal window:

TODO Find equivalent of react-scripts start.

$ git clone https://github.com/uclaacm/TeachLAFrontend.git
$ cd TeachLAFrontend
$ pnpm install
$ pnpm start # this doesn't work right now

The client should now be automatically opened in your browser; however, you can also manually visit it on localhost:5173. Note that we've also opened a copy of the go backend on localhost:8081.

Notes for Developers:

• every time you pull from master, make sure to run pnpm install - it's likely that some dependency has changed!
• lint-staged and husky auto-prettify some JS code on save - don't be spooked!
• GitHub Actions auto-builds branches and PRs - make sure that npm run test npm run prod_build pass, or your changes for-sure won't work!
• Netlify auto-deploys PRs, branches, and production deploys using the contents of npm run prod_build!