Configurable Settings for Repositories Registered to Yaydoc

Yaydoc, our automatic documentation generation and deployment project, generates and deploys documentation for each of its registered repositories. These repositories registered to Yaydoc have various configurable settings which can be edited to change the behavior of the build process and other processes surrounding it. These settings include

  • Report build status via email,
  • Get build status for pull requests to the repository,
  • Specify project branches,
  • Add or remove sub-projects to a registered master project, and
  • Enable or Disable the build process
  • Delete the repository

Report Build Status via Email

At Yaydoc, user has an option to receive a mail

  • On the first build after the repository is registered to Yaydoc, irrespective of the status
  • On every failed build
  • On the change of build status (Success to Failed or vice versa)
  • To the user who registered the repository to Yaydoc

It is possible that the user may register the repository from one email-address but wishes to receive the build status in another email. Furthermore, the user may never wish to receive any email from the repository. Keeping user’s experience at a priority, we also made it configurable for the user to disable the mail service.

This feature is implemented by adding a  mailService  attribute to the Repository Schema with status: Boolean and email: String as its sub-attributes. The feature is toggled, setting the value of ‘mailService.status’ to true or false.

const Repository = mongoose.model(‘Repository’, {
  ....
  ....
  mailService: {
    status: Boolean,
    email: String,
  },
  ....
  ....
});

Pull request implementing this feature: https://github.com/fossasia/yaydoc/pull/361/files

Get build status for pull requests to the repository

We made the generation of documentation website during each Pull Request to the registered repository. Since we do not want to increase the load on our server and also due to the fact that, since testing documentation generation during a Pull Request would be rare, and the user may not want to integrate Yaydoc to Pull Requests, we made this feature configurable with ‘disabled’ as the default configuration.

A detail description of the process can be found at: Showing Pull Request Build Status in Yaydoc | FOSSASIA blog

Specify Project Branches

The documentation for a registered repository is generated at every commit made to the repository. This process happens in commits made to any of the repository’s branches except for branches that they do not have a `.yaydoc.yml` file and the `gh-pages` branch. It is seen that In many of the open sources projects hosted on Github, the development flow follows an approach in which new features and patches are made in a separate branch of the same repository before sending a PR to merge it into the master repository. In such a case, generating documentation from all the branches is an overkill and would not be expected. Hence, we let the user specify branches from which the documentation should be generated and deployed.

The existing active branches of the repository along with the registered branches are retrieved and are used to display a Bootstrap select picker to specify branches.

router.get(‘/:owner/:repository/branches’, function (req, res, next) {
  var name = req.params.owner + ‘/’ + req.params.repository;
  async.parallel({
    branches: function (callback) {
      github.getRepositoryBranches(name, function (error, branches) {
        callback(error, branches);
      });
    },
    registeredBranches: function (callback) {
      var branches = [];
      for (var branches of registeredBranches) {
        branches.push(branch.name);
      }
      callback(error, branches);
    }
  }, function (error, results) {
    res.json({
      branches: results.branches,
      registeredBranches: results.registeredBranches
    });
  });
});

Once a user specify one or more of the existing branches of the repository, documentation build occurs only from those specified repositories if they contain the `.yaydoc.yml` file.

Pull request implementing this feature: https://github.com/fossasia/yaydoc/pull/424

Add or remove sub-projects to a registered master project

Apart from the generation of documentation of a single Github repository, we also offer the user to register sub-projects for a master project. The documentation generated from these subprojects are kept at a sub route of the website with auto-generated links at the start page. The addition and deletion of these sub-projects is also made configurable from repository settings.

Pull request implementing this feature: https://github.com/fossasia/yaydoc/pull/318

Resources:

  1. Async utilities for node and browser – https://caolan.github.io/async/
  2. Mongoose Schema Documentation: http://mongoosejs.com/docs/guide.html
Continue ReadingConfigurable Settings for Repositories Registered to Yaydoc

Store Log History for Repositories Registered to Yaydoc

Yaydoc, our automatic documentation generation and deployment project, generates and deploys documentation for each of its registered repository. For every commit made to the registered repository, there is a corresponding build process running at Yaydoc. These build processes have their own logs which are stored as text files. However, until now, these commits were never visible to the user. So, if there would have been a failed build process, the user would never know the reason behind, rendering the user unable to rectify the error.

Hence, there was a need to make these logs available to users. The initial thought was to store only the latest log overriding all the previous logs for the repository. However, it was unanimously decided by the developers to store a history of logs for the repository. The main motive behind this was to enable users to compare logs between different commits.

The content from the log files created is stored in a MongoDB collection. Following is the schema defined for the build logs.

const BuildLog = mongoose.model(‘BuildLog’, mongoose.Schema({
  repository: String,  // `full_name` of the repository
  buildNumber: {       // Incrementing number for each build
    type: Number,
    default: 0,
  },
  generate: {
    data: Buffer,      // Generate Logs content
    datetime: Date,    // Date time of generate log creation
  },
  ghpages: {
    data: Buffer,      // Github Pages Logs content
    datetime: Date,    // Date time of github pages log creation
  },
}));

The repository collection is also updated, adding a builds key storing the number of times the build process was triggered for a given repository. This key is incremented on every new build and the new value is stored along with the builds as buildNumber.

The build process involves a documentation generation and a documentation deployment script. The process of incrementing the build number in the repository occurs when we store the documentation generation logs. After that, Github pages logs are stored when the documentation deployment process is completed.

Since the logs are stored in a text file at the location temp/<email>/<filename>.txt, we had to read the file using NodeJS File system. The file is read synchronously using the fs.readFileSync(filename) function and then stored in the MongoDB collection.

/**
 * Store logs created while generating docs for a given repository
 * @param name: `full_name` of the repository
 * @param filepath: file path of the generate logs
 * @param callback
 */
module.exports.storeGenerateLogs = function (name, filepath, callback) {
  Repository.incrementBuildNumber(name, function (error, repository) {
    var buildlog = new BuildLog({
      repository: name,
      buildNumber: repository.builds,
      generate: {
        data: fs.readFileSync(filepath),
        datetime: new Date()
      }
    });
    buildlog.save(function (error, repository) {
      callback(error, repository);
    });
  });
};

/**
 * Store logs created while deploying docs for a given repository
 * @param name: `full_name` of the repository
 * @param filepath: file of the ghpages deploy logs
 * @param callback
 */
module.exports.storeGithubPagesLogs = function (name, filepath, callback) {
  Repository.getRepositoryByName(name, function (error, repository) {
    if (error) {
      callback(error);
    } else {
      BuildLog.getParticularBuildLog(repository.name, repository.builds, 
      function (error, buildLog) {
        buildLog.ghpages.data = fs.readFileSync(filepath);
        buildLog.ghpages.datetime = new Date();
        buildLog.save(function (error, buildLog) {
          callback(error, buildLog);
        });
      });
    }
  });
};

The stored logs can then be retrieved at two different routes, with /:owner/:name/logs showing a list to logs generated in at most 10 builds and /:owner/:name showing the latest log. Similar to logs generated by Travis, accessing these routes doesn’t require the user to login to Yaydoc.

/**
 * Get a single repository with a log history of 10
 * @param name: `full_name` of the repository
 * @param callback
 */
module.exports.getRepositoryWithLogs = function (name, callback) {
  Repository.aggregate([
    { $match: {name: name}},
    {
      $lookup: {
        from: ‘buildLogs’,
        localField: ‘name’,
        foreignField: ‘repository’,
        as: ‘logs’
      }
    },
    { $unwind: ‘$logs’ },
    { $sort: { ‘logs.buildNumber’: -1 } },
    { $limit: 10 }
  ]).exec(function (error, results){
    callback(error, results);
  });
};

In order to retrieve a repository along with its logs, we perform an aggregation in MongoDB which is similar to a Left Join in SQL. This is the $lookup aggregation and it performs a left outer join to an unsharded collection in the same database to filter in documents from the “joined” collection for processing. A similar method is used to retrieve the latest log by setting the limit aggregation to 1.

Resources:

  1. MongoDB Aggregation Lookup: https://docs.mongodb.com/manual/reference/operator/aggregation/lookup/
  2. Mongoose Aggregate Constructor: http://mongoosejs.com/docs/api.html#index_Mongoose-Aggregate
  3. NodeJS File System: https://nodejs.org/api/fs.html#fs_fs_readfilesync_path_options
Continue ReadingStore Log History for Repositories Registered to Yaydoc

Status Badges for Repositories Registered to Yaydoc

Yaydoc, our automatic documentation generation and deployment project, generates and deploys documentation for each of its registered repository at every commit. It is possible that due to any misconfiguration in users’ project the build process may fail. Hence, it is vital for an improved user experience to store the build status for at least the most recent build process.

There are different ways with which a user can be notified about the build status after a commit. At Yaydoc, we chose to notify the user by emailing a status report. Since sending an email at each at every commit can be quite annoying, we chose to limit it to specific scenarios. We decided that we will send the mail

  • On the first build after the repository is registered to Yaydoc, irrespective of the status
  • On every failed build
  • On the change of build status (Success to Failed or vice versa)
  • To the user who registered the repository to Yaydoc
exports.updateBuildStatus = function (name, buildStatus) {
  async.waterfall([
    function (callback) {
      Repository.setBuildStatusToRepository(name, buildStatus, 
      function (error, repository) {
        callback(error, repository);
      });
    },
    function (repository, callback) {
      if (repository.mailService === true && 
          (repository.buildStatus === false || buildStatus === false || 
           repository.buildStatus === undefined)) {
        User.getUserByUsername(repository.registrant.login, 
        function (error, user)) {
          callback(null, user, repository);
        }
      }
    }
  ], function (error, user, repository) {
    mailer.sendMailOnBuild(buildStatus, user.email, repository);
  });
};

Considering the fact that the user may not wish to receive build emails and hence made them configurable by adding a mailService: Boolean  key in repository’s collection.

Taking this forward, we then decided to generate status badges similar to how Travis and other Continuous Integration platform do. Since we now store a `buildStatus` for each repository, we can use it to generate an svg image to be added to README files of repositories. We generated  the status badges using Shields.io and added them to the route /<owner>/<reponame>.svg.  The dynamicity of image generated is achieved by retrieving the value of buildStatus and render the images with different constructs based on its value.

router.get(‘/:owner/:reponame.svg’, function (req, res, next) {
  var fullName = req.params.owner + ‘/’ + req.params.reponame;
  Repository.getBuildStatusByRepositoryName(fullName, function(error, result)) {
    var buildStatus = ‘invalid’; var width =94’; 
    var color = ‘#9f9f9f’; var x =70.5’;
    
    if (result.buildStatus) {
      buildStatus = ‘success’; width =102’; color = ‘#97CA00’; x =74.5’;
    } else {
      buildStatus = ‘failed’; width =88’; color = ‘#E05d44’; x =67.5’;
    }

    res.set(‘Content-Type’, ‘image/svg+xml’);
    res.render(“badge”, {
      status: buildStatus,
      width: width,
      color: color,
      x: x,
    });
  }
});

The status tags generated can then be added as:

[![Yaydoc Status] (https://yaydoc.herokuapp.com/imujjwal96/prelimQuiz.svg)] (https://yaydoc.herokuapp.com/imujjwal96/prelimQuiz)

Resources:

  1. Shields.io: Quality metadata badges for open source projects – https://shields.io
  2. Async utilities for node and browser – https://caolan.github.io/async/
Continue ReadingStatus Badges for Repositories Registered to Yaydoc

Display a List of Registered Repositories in User’s Dashboard

Yaydoc, our automatic documentation generation and deployment project was recently introduced with the dashboard for its registered users. Introducing a dashboard to Yaydoc enabled us to include a lot of new functionalities and processes associated with users and their registered repositories.

One of the main reasons of creating a dashboard for registered users was to enable them to access and edit configurations of the repositories they registered to Yaydoc. Hence, there was a need to display all of the registered repositories to users. These repositories include the public repositories owned by the users and organizations’ repositories the user has admin access to.

The organizations and users are retrieved separately in parallel using async.js. Async is a utility module which provides straight-forward, powerful functions for working with asynchronous JavaScript. The required functionality is achieved using async.parallel() method which runs the tasks of a collection of functions in parallel, without waiting until the previous function has completed.

async.parallel({
  organizations: function (callback) {
    github.retrieveOrganizations(user.token, function (error, organizations)) {
      callback(null, organizations);
    }
  },
  ownedRepositories: function (callback) {
    Repository.getRepositoriesByOwner(user.username, function (err, repositories)) {
      callback(null, repositories);
    }
  }, function (err, results) {
    res.render(‘dashboard’, {
      title: ‘Dashboard’,
      organizations: results.organizations,
      ownedRepositories: results.ownedRepositories
    });
  }
});

In order to show the organizations’ registered repositories  the github.retrieveOrganizations() function is updated, retrieving registered repositories from Yaydoc’s database. To perform the operation, we use async’s waterfall method. This method runs the tasks in series, passing the result of each function to the next function in that array. This function is needed since we are retrieving the organizations first and then for each organization, we retrieve all the repositories for each organization. To access each organization asynchronously, we use the async.forEachOf() method.

/**
 * Retrieve a list of organization the user has access to
 * Along with the organizations, also retrieve the registered repositories
 * @param accessToken: Access token of the user
 * @param callback
 */
exports.retrieveOrganizations = function (accessToken, callback) {
  async.waterfall([
    function (callback) {
      // Retrieve organizations
      ....
      organizations.push({
        id: organization.id,
        name: organization.login,
        avatar: organization.avatar_url
      });
      return callback(null, organizations);
    },
    function (organizations, callback) {
      async.forEachOf(organizations, function (value, key, callback)) {
        Repository.getRepositoriesByOwner(value.name, function (error, repositories) {
          value.repositories = repositories;
          update.push(value);
          callback()
        });
      }, function (err) {
        callback(null, update);
      }
    }
  ], function (error, result) {
    callback(error, result);
  });
};

Showing the list of repositories, we now plan to make these repositories configurable. Some of these configurations may include deleting the repository and enabling or disabling it from the build process.

Resources

  1. Async utilities for node and browser – https://caolan.github.io/async/
  2. Github’s organization API https://developer.github.com/v3/orgs/
Continue ReadingDisplay a List of Registered Repositories in User’s Dashboard

Registering Organizations’ Repositories for Continuous Integration with Yaydoc

Among various features implemented in Yaydoc was the introduction of a modal in the Web Interface used for Continuous Deployment. The modal was used to register user’s repositories to Yaydoc. All the registered repositories then had their documentation updated continuously at each commit made to the repository. This functionality is achieved using Github Webhooks.

The implementation was able to perform the continuous deployment successfully. However, there was a limitation that only the public repositories owned by a user could be registered. Repositories owned by some organisations, which the user either owned or had admin access to couldn’t be registered to Yaydoc.

In order to perform this enhancement, a select tag was added which contains all the organizations the user have authorized Yaydoc to access. These organizations were received from Github’s Organization API using the user’s access token.

/**
 * Retrieve a list of organization the user has access to
 * @param accessToken: Access Token of the user
 * @param callback: Returning the list of organizations
 */
exports.retrieveOrgs = function (accessToken, callback) {
  request({
    url: ‘https://api.github.com/user/orgs’,
    headers: {
      ‘User-Agent’: ‘request’,
      ‘Authorization’: ‘token ’ + accessToken
    }
  }, function (error, response, body) {
    var organizations = [];
    var bodyJSON = JSON.parse(body);
    bodyJSON.forEach(function (organization) {
      organizations.push(organization.login);
    });
    return callback(organizations);
  });
};

On selecting a particular organization from the select tag, the list of repositories is updated. The user then inputs a query in a search input which on submitting shows a list of repositories that matches the tag. An AJAX get request is sent to Github’s Search API in order to retrieve all the repositories matching the keyword.

$(function () {
  ....
$.get(`https://api.github.com/search/repositories?q=user:${username}+fork:true+${searchBarInput.val()}`, function (result) {
    ....
    result.items.forEach(function (repository) {
      options +=<option>+ repo.full_name +</option>’;
    });
    ....
  });
  ....
});

The selected repository is then submitted to the backend where the repository is registered in Yaydoc’s database and a hook is setup to Yaydoc’s CI, as it was happening with user’s repositories. After a successful registration, every commit on the user’s or organization’s repository sends a webhook on receiving which, Yaydoc performs the documentation generation and deployment process.

Resources:

  1. Github’s Organization API: https://developer.github.com/v3/orgs/
  2. Github’s Search API: https://developer.github.com/v3/search/
  3. Simplified HTTP Request Client: https://github.com/request/request
Continue ReadingRegistering Organizations’ Repositories for Continuous Integration with Yaydoc

Advanced configurations in Yaydoc’s Web UI

Yaydoc’s User Interface consists of a form with three required fields; the user’s email address, git repository’s URL, and a theme for the generated website. Specific values of these fields are the minimum requirement to generate documentation for a project. There are certain other configuration variables for whom we assumed default values. Among these, we assumed `docs/` directory or the directory specified in the `yaydoc.yml` configuration file as the default path for the documentation. Also, `Default Branch` is assumed as the branch to generate documentation website. However, this cannot guarantee the generation of docs for every other project. These configurations can have different values based on a project.

Thus, there was a need to include certain input values for advanced configuration. The addition of these configurations in the UI doesn’t compel the user to specify them. In our attempt to improve user’s experience, we show the default values to the user when they are specifying custom values for these configurations.

If the user doesn’t specify a value for the repository’s branch, a default value is retrieved from Github’s Repository Components API, taking repository’s URL from the required input as the input URL.

/**
 * Setting the branch name with `default_branch` attriburte from
 * Github’s Repository Components API
 * @param gitUrl: URL of the github repository
 */
setDefaultBranchName: function (gitUrl) {
  var owner = gitUrl.split(“/”)[3] || ‘’;
  var repository = gitUrl.split(“/”)[4] || ‘’).split(‘.’)[0] || ‘’;
  $.get(‘https://api.github.com/repos/’ + owner + ‘/’ + repository, {
    headers: {“User-Agent”: “Yaydoc”}
  }).complete(function (data) {
    $(“#target_branch”).val(data.responseJSON.default_branch);
  });
}

There are certain cases in which the design of the Web User Interface could have been confusing. Since we are displaying all the advanced configurations at once, it could’ve appeared to the users that they are specifying empty values for the other. Thus to handle this, inputs were enabled on toggle when a checkbox beside them was checked. This was achieved making following changes in the front end of the code.

/**
 * Toggle editing of Branch Name input
 */
$(“#btnEditBranch”).click(function () {
  styles.toggleEditing(“target_branch”);
  ....
  ....
});

/**
 * Toggle Enabling/Disabling an input tag
 * @param id: `id` attribute of input tag
 */
toggleEditing: function (id) {
  const input = $(‘#’ + id);
  if (input.attr(‘disabled’)) {
    input.removeAttr(‘disabled’);
    $(‘#checkbox_’ + id).removeClass(‘glyphicon-unchecked’).addClass(‘glyphicon-check’);
  } else {
    input.attr(‘disabled’, ‘disabled’);
    $(‘checkbox_’ + id).removeClass(‘glyphicon-check’).addClass(‘glyphicon-unchecked’);
  }
}

Introducing advanced configurations to the User Interface has opened the possibility for even more projects to generate and deploy docs with much lesser constraints. One of our main aim for this project is to have a fairly simple UI and UX and we hope to bring further updated to achieve that.

Resources:

  1. Github’s Repository API: https://developer.github.com/v3/repos/
  2. jQuery’s AJAX Requests: https://api.jquery.com/jquery.get
Continue ReadingAdvanced configurations in Yaydoc’s Web UI

Displaying selective logs in Yaydoc with downloadable detailed logs

Yaydoc, our automatic documentation generation and deployment project, at the crux of it consists of bash scripts. These bash scripts perform various actions, including documentation generation, deployment to Github and deployment to Heroku.

Since the inception of the User Interface of the Web UI, we have been spitting out the output of the bash script directly to the console output block without any filter. We understand that the output contains a lot of jargon that provides no essential information to the user. Hence, to improve the user experience of our platform, we decided to separate the Detailed logs and show only basic logs outlining the flow of the processes.

To implement this, we append all the logs to a unique file, sending only basic logs to stdout and stderr. Since we attend to store logs and display them in the console block of Web UI simultaneously we use the tee command, piping it with echo commands.

function print_log {
  if [ -n “$LOGFILE” ]; then
    echo -e $1 | tee -a ${LOGFILE}
  else
    echo -e $1
  fi
}

${LOGFILE}  is a unique file that has the same name as the preview directory and the compressed repository. After storing the logs in the file, the contents of the file are outputted using the cat command and is then shown to the user in a modal which is after the Detailed Logs button is clicked.

$(“#btnLogs”).click(function () {
  socket.emit(‘retrieve-detailed-logs’, data);
  ....
});

socket.on(‘retrieve-detailed-logs’, function (data) {
  var process = spawn(‘cat’, [‘temp/’+data.email+’/’+data.uniqueId+’.txt’]);
  process.stdout.setEncoding(‘utf-8’);
  process.stdout.on(‘data’, function (data)) {
    socket.emit(‘file-content’, data);
  }
});

To keep the indentation of the logs, we display the content inside the HTML pre tags. Along with displaying the detailed logs, we also let our two additional functionalities. These are ‘Copy to Clipboard’ and ‘Download as text file’. The ‘copy to clipboard’ functionality is achieved using the clipboard.js jQuery library while the `Download` functionality is achieved using res.download(file) function of ExpressJS response.

socket.on(‘file-content’, function (data) {
  new Clipboard(‘#copy-button’);
  $(‘#detailed-logs’).html(data);
  $(‘#detailed-logs-modal’).modal(‘show’);
});

Resources:

  1. https://clipboardjs.com – A modern approach to copy text to clipboard
  2. https://socket.io/ – The fastest and most reliable real-time engine
Continue ReadingDisplaying selective logs in Yaydoc with downloadable detailed logs

Deploying documentations generated by Yaydoc to Heroku

There are many web applications available online that generates static websites. Among these projects are two unique projects developed here at FOSSASIA. These are the Open Event WebApp Generator and Yaydoc (an automatic documentation generation and deployment project.). Since Yaydoc already supports the deployment of the generated documentations to Github pages, it was just a matter of time that the deployment to Heroku is also supported.

Heroku is an excellent cloud-based platform used as a web application deployment service. Heroku provides most of its services at free of cost to the users and is excellent to host static websites provided that a little bit of tweaking is done.

For this implementation, we use the `Platform API` provided by Heroku. Stating it’s description mentioned in the documentation,

The platform API empowers developers to automate, extend and combine Heroku with other services. You can use the platform API to programmatically create apps, provision add-ons and perform other tasks that could previously only be accomplished with Heroku toolbelt or dashboard.

In order to deploy the static websites to Heroku, we need to first prepare a bundle of source code that has been compiled and is ready for execution on the Heroku runtime. This bundle is known as a Slug.

cd temp/$EMAIL/${UNIQUE_ID}_preview
mkdir -p app
cd app

curl https://nodejs.org/dist/v6.11.0/node-v6.11.0-linux-x64.tar.gz | tar xzv > /dev/null

cp $BASE/web.js
rsync -av --progress ../ . --exclude app

cd ..
tar czfv slug.tgz ./app > /dev/null

We are using the files generated for preview to bundle them in a slug. Also, we download the NodeJS runtime files since we are deploying a static website to Heroku. Along with the static files, we require bundling a NodeJS server file (web.js) that will be used to reference the static files in the application.

After preparing the Slug, we publish the static web application to Heroku. For this, we start by creating a Heroku app using the command `heroku create <app-name>`. The app name is decided by the user when he or she fills the form in the Yaydoc Web App. Following that, we request Heroku to allocate a new slug for your app. After that, we upload the slug tar file to the platform.

# Create Heroku 
heroku create $APP_NAME

# Allocating new Slug
Arr=($(curl -u “:$API_KEY” -X \
-H ‘Content-Type:application/json’ \
-H ‘Accept: application/vnd.heroku+json;version=3’ \
-d ‘{“process_types”:{“web”:”node-v6.11.0-linux-x64/bin/node web.js”}}’ \
-n https://api.heroku.com/apps/${APP_NAME}/slugs | \
python -c “import sys,json; obj=json.load(sys.stdin);
print(obj[‘blob’][‘url’] + ‘\n’ + obj[‘id’])”))

# Upload the slug tar file
curl -X PUT \
-H “Content-Type:”\
--data-binary @slug.tgz \
“${Arr[0]}”

After uploading the slug to Heroku, we need to release the app. This is done using the following command.

curl -u “:$API_KEY” -X POST \
-H “Accept: application/vnd.heroku+json; version=3” \
-H “Content-Type: application/json” \
-d ‘{“slug”:”’${Arr[1]}’”}’ \
-n https://api.heroku.com/apps/$APP_NAME/releases

Releasing the application completes the process of deployment, making the documentation generated by Yaydoc up and running at the following URL: https://<app-name>.herokuapp.com/

 

Continue ReadingDeploying documentations generated by Yaydoc to Heroku

Editing a file stored in the webserver from the Yaydoc Web App

As a developer, working on a web application, you may want your users to be able to edit a file stored in your webserver. There may be certain use cases in which this may be required. Consider, for instance, its use case in Yaydoc.

Yaydoc allows its users the feature of continuous deployment of their documentation by adding certain configurations in their .travis.yml file. It is possible for Yaydoc to achieve the editing of the Travis file from the Web App itself.

To enable the support of certain functionality in your web application, I have prepared a script using ExpressJS and Socket.IO which can perform the following action. At the client side, we define a retrieve-file event which emits a request to the server. At the server side, we handle the event by executing a retrieveContent(...) function which uses spawn method of child_process to execute a script that retrieves the content of a file.

// Client Side
$(function () {
 var socket = io();
 ....
 ....
 $(“#editor-button”).click(function () {
   socket.emit(“retrieve-file”);
 });
 ....
 ....
});

// Server Side
io.on(“connection”, function (socket) {
 socket.on(“retrieve-file”, function () {
   retrieveContent(socket);
 });
 ....
 ....
});

var retrieveContent = function (socket) {
 var process = require(“child_process”).spawn(“cat”, [“.travis.yml”]);
 process.stdout.on(“data”, function (data) {
   socket.emit(“file-content”, data);
 });
};

After the file content is retrieved from the server, we use a Javascript Editor like ACE to edit the content of the file. Making all the changes to the file, we emit a store-content event. At the server side, we handle the event by executing a storeContent(…) function which uses exec method of child_process to execute a bash script that stores the content to the same file.

$(function () {
 var socket = io();
 var editor = ace.edit(“editor”);
 ....
 ....
 socket.on(“file-content”, function (data) {
   editor.setValue(data, -1);
 });
 ....
 ....
 $(“#save-modal”).click(function () {
   socket.emit(“store-content”, editor.getValue());
 });
});

io.on(“connection”, function (socket) {
 ....
 socket.on(“store-content”, function (data) {
   storeContent(socket, data);
 });
});

var storeContent = function (socket, data) {
 var script = ‘truncate -s 0 .travis.yml && echo “’ + data + ‘“ >> .travis.yml’;
 var process = require(“child_process”).exec(script);

 process.on(“exit”, function (code) {
   if (code === 0) {
     socket.emit(“save-successful”);
   }
 });
};

After successful execution of the script, a successful event is sent to the client-side which can then be handled.

A minimal sample of this application can be found at: https://github.com/imujjwal96/socket-editor

Continue ReadingEditing a file stored in the webserver from the Yaydoc Web App