Welcome to kursinfo-web 👋

Introduction

The course information project (KIP) is an initiative at KTH that was launched in 2018 to improve the quality and availability of information about KTH:s courses. The background to the project is, among other things, that it was difficult for the student to find information about the courses and even more difficult to compare information about several courses. The reason for the problems is scattered course information in several places and that there is no uniformity or assigned places for the course information. The project takes measures to consolidate course information into two locations and to present the information in a manner that is uniform for KTH. The student should find the right information about the course, depending on their needs. The result of the project is a public course site where the correct course information is collected and presented uniformly. Also, a tool is developed for teachers to enter and publish course information. Eventually, this will lead to the student making better decisions based on their needs, and it will also reduce the burden on teachers and administration regarding questions and support for the student.

🏠 Homepage

Overview

Kursinfo-web is a microservice with the public view of course information. It uses React, MobX, and is based on node-web.

API:s

Kursinfo-web fetches data from:

• Course information API
  • Dev (Stage): api-r.referens.sys.kth.se/api/kursinfo
  • Prod (Active): api.kth.se/api/kursinfo
• API to generate course syllabuses’ PDF:s
  • Dev (Stage): api-r.referens.sys.kth.se/api/kursplan
  • Prod (Active): api.kth.se/api/kursplan
• Course memo API
  • Dev (Stage): api-r.referens.sys.kth.se/api/kurs-pm-data
  • Prod (Active): api.kth.se/api/kurs-pm-data
• API för kurs- och programinformation
  • Dev (Stage): api-r.referens.sys.kth.se/api/kopps/v2/
  • Prod (Active): api.kth.se/api/kopps/v2/

Related projects

• kursinfo-admin-web
• kursinfo-api
• kursplan-api
• kurs-pm-data-api
• node-web

Prerequisites

• Node.js 18.0.0
• Ansible Vault

Secrets for Development

Secrets during local development are stored in a gitignored .env file (env.in can be used as template for your .env file). More details about environment variable setup and secrets can be found in confluence.

For Development

Install

First time you might need to use options --ignore-scripts because of npm resolutions:

npm install --ignore-scripts

or

npm install

You might need to install as well:

npm install cross-env
npm install concurrently

Environment variables

The required environment variables to run this project for development are listed in the .env.in file. You can retrieve their corresponding values from the Azure portal and populate the environment variables accordingly. To fetch all the environment variables, use the following command:

• Ensure you are logged in to Azure before running this command. You can log in by using the az acr login command.

• For running this command you need to be logge in on Azure for this you can run az acr login command

Usage

Start the service on localhost:3000/student/kurser/kurs/:courseCode.

npm run start-dev

Debug in Visual Studio Code

It's possible to use debugging options available in Visual Studio Code Add to .vscode file launch.json:

• Microsoft

{
  "version": "0.2.0",
  "configurations": [
    {
      "type": "node",
      "request": "launch",
      "name": "Debug kursinfo-web",
      "program": "${workspaceFolder}\\app.js",
      "envFile": "${workspaceFolder}\\.env",
      "env": {
        "NODE_ENV": "development"
      }
    }
  ]
}

• Mac, Unix and so on

{
  "version": "0.2.0",
  "configurations": [
    {
      "type": "node",
      "request": "launch",
      "name": "Debug kursinfo-web",
      "program": "${workspaceFolder}/app.js",
      "envFile": "${workspaceFolder}/.env",
      "env": {
        "NODE_ENV": "development"
      }
    }
  ]
}

Run Locally Using Docker

You can run the project locally using Docker for an isolated and consistent environment. Follow these steps:

Build Docker Image

First, build the Docker image by running the following command:

If you are using mac change docker build -f Dockerfile-dev -t "$IMAGE_NAME" with docker build --platform linux/arm64/v8 -f Dockerfile-dev -t "$IMAGE_NAME".

npm run docker:build

This will execute the docker-build-image.sh script in development mode (dev) this script will create Dockerfile-dev file which will be used for running the project locally using docker.

Run Docker Container

After the image has been built, you can start the Docker container using the following command:

npm run docker:run

This will execute the docker-run-image.sh script in development mode (dev), running the application locally in Docker.

The application now will be accessible at http://localhost:3000/student/kurser/kurs/:courseCode.

• To run this project locally, ensure all required environment variables are set. You can do this by running the command: npm run fetch-all-env-variables.

Alternative approach for running locally using Docker

alternatively you can run the following command:

docker-compose up

Here you need to remove the .in at the end of the docker-compose.yml.in.

• Run az acr login --name kthregistry before running the scripts.

Deploy

The deployment process is described in Build, release, deploy. Technical details, such as configuration, is described in How to deploy your 🐳 application using Cellus-Registy and 🔧 How To Configure Your Application For The Pipeline.

Author

👤 KTH

• Website: kth.github.io/
• Github: @KTH