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Development

Papercups runs on Elixir/Phoenix, with a TypeScript React app for the frontend.

Setup with asdf (recommended)#

First, you'll need to install the following:

Once that's all set, clone the repo:

git clone git@github.com:papercups-io/papercups.git
cd papercups

And install all our dependencies:

asdf install
mix local.hex
mix deps.get
npm install --prefix=assets # cd assets && npm install
mix ecto.setup
mix phx.server # or `iex -S mix phx.server` for interactive mode

Manual setup (deprecated)#

If you haven't installed Elixir, Phoenix, NodeJS, and PostgresQL yet, you can find some great instructions here: https://hexdocs.pm/phoenix/installation.html

tl;dr:

mix local.hex
  • To check that we are on Elixir 1.6 and Erlang 20 or later, run:
elixir -v
Erlang/OTP 20 [erts-9.3] [source] [64-bit] [smp:8:8] [async-threads:10] [hipe] [kernel-poll:false] [dtrace]
Elixir 1.6.3
  • Install the Phoenix application generator:
mix archive.install hex phx_new 1.5.4

Cloning the repo#

git clone git@github.com:papercups-io/papercups.git
cd papercups

To start your server#

  • Install backend dependencies with mix deps.get
  • Install frontend dependencies with npm install --prefix=assets (or cd assets && npm install)
  • Create and migrate your database with mix ecto.setup
  • Start the server with mix phx.server (or iex -S mix phx.server for interactive mode)

This will automatically start up the React frontend in watch mode on localhost:3000, with the API running on localhost:4000.

Frontend development#

The frontend code will start up automatically when you run mix phx.server, but for more information see: assets/README.md

Developing on Docker#

You can edit your local code when developing with docker and it will update in the container.

The docker file is made for development only at the moment

docker build -t papercups . && docker-compose up

Running tests#

Create a PostgreSQL test database named: chat_api_test, and run:

mix test

Setting up email alerts#

Set the environment variables in the .env.example file.

At the moment we only support Mailgun — other messaging channels are coming soon!

Deploying#

We currently use Heroku for deployments. (This is for internal use only.)

git push heroku master
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