Working git, ruby, and rubygems, wget

• Extensions to core classes applied at application startup

Install Docker and make sure that docker-compose is installed too (it should be part of the standard Docker installation).

git clone [email protected]:concord-consortium/rigse.git portal
cd portal
docker-compose up # this will take 15 minutes to download gems

Increase memory available to Docker to 4GiB-5GiB (OSX: Preferences... -> Advanced tab).

Now open your browser to http://0.0.0.0:3000. On OS X this might take more than 5 minutes to load the first page. Look in the terminal where you ran docker-compose up to monitor progress.

Visit the Docker docs for how to use your portal running in docker. This also includes: instructions on speeding things up on OS X, using a local dns+proxy system to avoid port conflicts, and setting up ssh for capistrano deploys.

After getting the server running it's good to confirm that all the tests pass before changing any code.

Prepare a database for use when running the spec tests:

RAILS_ENV=test rake db:create
rake db:test:prepare
rake db:feature_test:prepare
RAILS_ENV=cucumber rake app:setup:create_default_data

Start SOLR in test environment (it works with cucumber tests too):

RAILS_ENV=test rake sunspot:solr:run

Run the rspec unit tests:

rspec spec/

Prepare a database for use when running the cucumber tests:

RAILS_ENV=feature_test rake db:create
rake db:feature_test:prepare
RAILS_ENV=cucumber rake app:setup:create_default_data

Run the cucumber integration tests:

cucumber features/

All these tests should pass. If you add features make sure and add tests for these new features.

These instructions assume that you are setting up LARA and Portal using docker-compose files. It also assumes some prerequisites:

• You are using an http-proxy dns container: Setup Dinghy on OSX
• You are using https for LARA and the Portal: Setup https for LARA and Portal
• You are logged into docker to gain access to our private images: Logging into Docker

With the following settings you can:

• Log into LARA from the portal
• Publish LARA activities and sequences to the portal
• Publish Activity Player activities and sequences to the portal
• Copy LARA activities and sequences from the portal
• View a teacher or student report (portal-report) for a local LARA activity or sequence
• View a teacher or student report (portal-report) for a local Activity Player activity or sequence

Note: Student data and resource structure will be stored in the hosted Firestore database of report-service-dev. This is a used by the portal-report. Because of this, you must be online.

1. in the Portal: cp .env-osx-sample .env
2. in the Portal .env set PORTAL_PROTOCOL=https
3. start up the Portal: docker-compose up
4. Add a Firebase App for report-service-dev with docker-compose exec app bundle exec app:setup:add_report_service_firebase_app, it will ask for the "private_key", paste in the private key from report-service-dev firebase app in learn.staging.concord.org
5. in LARA: cp .env-osx-sample .env
6. in LARA .env:
   1. set REPORT_SERVICE_TOKEN (see the comment in the .env-osx-sample file)
   2. set LARA_PROTOCOL=https
   3. set PORTAL_PROTOCOL=https
7. start up LARA: docker-compose up
8. Setup admin access to LARA using a portal SSO login:
   1. Go to https://app.lara.docker
   2. Click log in, and choose "localhost"
   3. This will take you to the portal (app.portal.docker)
   4. Log in with admin, password
   5. You are now logged in with [email protected] in LARA, however this user is not actually an admin in LARA
   6. Run the following command in terminal in the LARA folder: docker-compose exec app bundle exec rake lightweight:admin_last_user

Notes:

• LARA runtime activities published to the portal will automatically have report buttons for teachers and students
• AP runtime activities published to the portal will not have report buttons for teachers and students. You must add external reports in the "portal settings" of the portal for the newly published resource
• The "show my work" button in the AP will not work by default when running locally like this. It will not add a correct sourceKey parameter for the portal-report URL it generates. Hopefully this will be fixed soon.
• The portal will not be configured with the same settings as learn.concord.org for the home page. To see this locally you should look at the settings on learn.staging.concord.org and copy those settings to your local portal settings.

1. In the Portal, edit .env:
   1. Append docker/dev/docker-compose-lara-proxy.yml to the COMPOSE_FILE var.
   2. If your local portal domain is not app.portal.docker, then set PORTAL_HOST
   3. set PORTAL_PROTOCOL=https
   4. If your lara host name is not app.lara.docker, then set LARA_HOST
2. Stop your portal services if they are running, and update them with docker-compose up
3. In the Portal, as an administrator:
   1. Create or update an "Auth Client". Using the following settings:

      Name: 'localhost'
      App Id: 'localhost'
      App Secret: 'unsecure local secret'
      Client Type: confidential
      Site Url: 'https://app.lara.docker'
      Allowed Domains: (leave blank)
      Allowed URL Redirects: 'https://app.lara.docker/users/auth/cc_portal_localhost/callback'
      

   2. Check the external report called DEFAULT_REPORT_SERVICE. It should have a URL of: https://portal-report.concord.org/branch/master/index.html?sourceKey=app.lara.docker.username Replace username with the username on your local system. If you don't know your username, run echo $USER. Note: this sourceKey param needs to match the value of LARA's REPORT_SERVICE_TOOL_ID environment variable. And by default this variable is configured to be app.lara.docker.${USER}.
   3. Add a Firebase App for report-service-dev, copy the values for the report-service-dev firebase app in learn.staging.concord.org
   4. Add a new "Auth Client" for the portal-report

      Name: 'Portal Report SPA'
      App Id: 'portal-report'
      App Secret: (leave default value, this isn't used)
      Client Type: public
      Site Url: 'https://portal-report.concord.org'
      Allowed Domains: 'portal-report.concord.org'
      Allowed URL Redirects: 'https://portal-report.concord.org/branch/master/index.html'
      

4. In LARA, edit .env:
   1. Append docker/dev/docker-compose-portal-proxy.yml to the COMPOSE_FILE var.
   2. Set PORTAL_HOST to app.portal.docker or whatever domain your local portal is
   3. Set PORTAL_PROTOCOL=https
   4. set LARA_PROTOCOL=https
   5. Set REPORT_SERVICE_TOKEN (see the comment in the .env file)
   6. set REPORT_SERVICE_URL (see the value in the .env-osx-sample file)
5. Stop your Lara services if they are running, and update them with docker-compose up
6. If you want admin access to Lara when signing in with a portal user, you will need to first login to LARA with this portal user. And then either:
   • use the rails console in LARA to set the is_admin flag of the newly created user.
   • use an existing admin in LARA to make the new user an admin.
7. Setup Activity Player support
   1. Add a Tool to the portal with:

      Name: ActivityPlayer
      Source Type: ActivityPlayer
      Tool ID: https://activity-player.concord.org
      

   2. Make an external report. In the Url field below replace the username in the sourceKey parameter with your local username:

      Name: AP Report
      Url: https://portal-report.concord.org/branch/master/index.html?sourceKey=app.lara.docker.username&answersSourceKey=activity-player.concord.org
      Launch text: AP Report
      Client: DEFAULT_REPORT_SERVICE_CLIENT
      Report Type: offering
      Allowed For Students: true
      Default Report For Source Type:
      Report available for individual students: true
      Report available for individual activities: true
      Use Query JWT: false
      Move Students API URL:
      Move Students API Token:
      

   3. Add this AP Report external report to each AP resource you publish the portal from LARA.

When you run the portal-report if you just see a spinner. Here are some steps to try:

1. Verify the source is be added to firestore:
   1. Go to the firebase console and open the report-service-dev firestore.
   2. Look in the sources collection
   3. You should see a app.lara.docker.{$USER} collection (USER is your local username)
   4. If you don't see this collection then your LARA is not properly publishing the report structure to the report-service. In LARA check the values of REPORT_SERVICE_TOKEN and REPORT_SERVICE_URL (see above). A less common error would be a misconfigured LARA_HOST and TOOL_ID setup.
   5. After fixing these values update your lara app so it picks up the variables with docker-compose up. And make a change to your activity so it republishes the structure to Firestore. Check that the app.lara.docker.{$USER} collection is there now.
2. Verify the resource structure added to firestore has the right URL:
   1. Go to the firebase console and open the report-service-dev firestore.
   2. Inside of the sources/app.lara.docker.{$USER} collection will be a resources collection. Inside of this will be a document for each activity or sequence that you've published from LARA.
   3. In these documents look at the url field. It needs to exactly matches what the portal-report is looking for. If it starts with http: instead of https: then you will see the spinner.
   4. To know what the portal-report is looking for in firestore: when you run the portal-report look at the network dev tools and look for the offering info request it makes to the portal. This request's url will look something like: https://app.rigse.docker/api/v1/offerings/[id]. Look at the response to this request and find the activity_url field.
      • if this is an LARA runtime activity or sequence the activity_url will look like: https://app.lara.docker/activities/22 In this case, this string should exactly match what is in the url field in firestore.
      • if this is a AP runtime activity the activity_url will look like: https://activity-player.concord.org/branch/master/?activity=https%3A%2F%2Fapp.lara.docker%2Fapi%2Fv1%2Factivities%2F22.json In this case, you need to unescape the activity parameter. Then take the value of the activity param and remove the /api/v1 and remove the .json at the end. The result of that transformation snould exactly match what is in url field in firestore.
      • if this is a AP runtime sequence follow the directions for AP activity above except the parameter name is sequence instead of activity
   5. To fix the http: instead of https: problem make sure your LARA_PROTOCOL is set to https in your lara .env file. Then update your lara container with docker-compose up. And then make a change to the LARA activity or sequence to republish it. Verify the url field in firestore has been updated.

If you want to change the portal url from "app.portal.docker" to "learn.dev.docker", please follow the below steps:

1. In the Portal, edit '.env' file and update PORTAL_HOST as learn.dev.docker
2. In the Portal, edit '.env' file and update PORTAL_PROTOCOL as https for automation
3. In the Portal, as an administrator, edit the Auth Client settings:

    Site Url: 'https://learn.dev.docker'
    Allowed URL Redirects: 'https://learn.dev.docker/users/auth/cc_portal_localhost/callback'

We are using the themes_for_rails gem Theme views go in app/themes/(name)/views/ Theme assets go in app/assets/theme/(name)/ Sample config files go in config/themes/(name)/settings.sample.yml

For now the best thing to do is to copy an existing theme. eg:

mkdir ./config/themes/<new_theme_name>

# configuration files:
cp ./config/themes/<old_theme_name>/settings.sample.yml
./config/themes/<new_theme_name>

# view files:
cp -r ./themes/<old_theme_name> ./themes/<new_theme_name>

# assets:
cp -r ./app/assets/themes/<old_theme_name>
./app/assets/themes/<new_theme_name>

# finally change the theme setting in your config/settings.yml
open config/settings.yml

When a rails-portal instance is created two tables containing data for schools and districts in the US are created from data supplied by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).

NCES maintains a database about US districts and schools called the Common Core of Data

The rake task: portal:setup:create_districts_and_schools_from_nces_data downloads 2006 NCES CCD data files from NCES website and imports data from these data files into the following models:

• Portal::Nces06District
• Portal::Nces06School

Only data from states and provinces identified in the config/settings.yml for the portal instance are imported.

The NCES district and school models are used to provide data from which districts and schools actively using the portal are be created.

The Portal::Nces06District includes about 50 different fields of data for each district.

The Portal::Nces06Schoolincludes about 500 different fields of data for each school.

• NCES Common Core of Data Public Elementary/Secondary School Universe Survey: School Year 2006–07, Version 1b
• NCES Common Core of Data Local Education Agency Universe Survey: School Year 2006–07

• rspec and rspec-rails
• rspec repo
• rspec-rails repo

Feature specs that require javascript are run by Chrome via Selenium. By default Chrome will run in headless mode and there is nothing special you need to do inside of a Docker development environment.

However, if you would like to run Chrome in non-headless mode on your host machine, this is possible by making the following changes:

• set the environment variable HEADLESS=false if you are running the tests by using docker-compose exec app /bin/bash, then you can set HEADLESS in the shell.
• expose the capybara port by adding the docker-compose-publish-capybara-port overlay to to your .env file
• install chromedriver on your host machine
• start it with the command: chromedriver --whitelisted-ips
• ensure you have no firewall running on your host machine, or if you do please open port 9515
• ensure that Chrome is installed on the host machine.

factory_bot allows you to quickly define prototypes for each of your models and ask for instances with properties that are important to the test at hand.

• Factory Bot
• Factory Bot repo
• Factory Bot introduction
• Factory Botrdoc

Running all the rspec tests:

bundle exec rake spec

Running a single file:

bundle exec rake spec SPEC=spec/routing/dataservice/bundle_contents_routing_spec.rb

Running a single directory:

bundle exec rake spec SPEC=spec/routing/dataservice

Running all the controller tests:

bundle exec rake spec SPEC=spec/controllers

Running all the feature tests: bundle exec rake cucumber

Running all the feature tests using the ci_reporter gem that's used on the hudson CI system: bundle exec rake hudson:cucumber

Running a single feature:

bundle exec cucumber features/student_can_not_see_deactivated_offerings.feature

Running a single feature in non-headless mode:

HEADLESS=false bundle exec cucumber features/student_can_not_see_deactivated_offerings.feature

Integration tests are difficult to debug without accessing the content in the browser and inspecting the relevant elements. Using debugging tools in the command line or trying to view the problem from a screenshot is not helpful when the problem might be a hidden link or different element type, for example.

Using pry in non-headless mode in Chrome opens a new Chrome window showing you the state of the page where pry has paused the test. You can inspect elements in the page at that point in time to more easily identify the problem.

Follow the instructions above to set up and start chromedriver.

For a particular cucumber test where JavaScript is enabled, find the step you want to test:

And I follow "Admin"

Find the corresponding step definition and insert binding.pry:

When /^(?:|I )follow "([^"]*)"$/ do |link|
  binding.pry
  first(:link, link).click
end

Make sure chromedriver is running and run the test with HEADLESS=false prepended to the path

$ HEADLESS=false bundle exec cucumber features/admin_accesses_special_pages.feature

When pry is hit, a new Chrome window will pop up where you can inspect element and use the pry in the command line as usual.

note: Please see documentation regarding running chromedriver on your host machine above ☝️.

• The Page Elements Model Part I
• Page Elements Model Part II
• HAML, Compass and SASS
• PageElement View partials
• HAML, Compass and SASS
• Javascript use in Portal

screencast: The Page Elements Model PartI

Install github version of railroad with aasm patches from ddolar's repo

Generate a graph of the projects models using railroad: railroad -o models.dot -M

Open that file with omnigraffle, or traslate to some other image format using the dot tool.

screencast: Page Elements Model PartII

Using mysql query browser to view schema: Mysql gui-tools

Use the generator to generate page elements eg:

./script/generate element xhtml content:text

screencast: PageElement View partials

Shows the relationship between:

• pages/show.html.haml
• pages/element_container.html.haml
• shared/_embeddable_container.html.haml
• <embeddable_type>/_show.html.haml

screencast: HAML, Compass and SASS

Brief introduction to the technologies generally, and how we use them specifically

• HAML & SASS
• Compass: http
• BluePrint: http

screencast: Javascript use in Portal

Javascript librararies we are using, and what things we have written by ourselves; Stuff we did:

• accordion view
• drop-downs Other libraries
• prototype
• scriptaculous
• tinymce
• flotr

• Capistrano Deployment Recipes

Once a development branch has been deployed to a development server, tested and found reliable enough to deploy to staging here's how to do it.

Our convention is to create dev, staging, and production branches in the git repository following that use the same name.

For example the xproject family have the following capistrano stages and branches in teh git repository:

• xproject_dev_
• xproject_staging_
• xproject_production_

In the code below I will assume that we are using the xproject series of stages and branches.

If you don't already have a local branch of staging

git branch  --track xproject_staging origin/xproject_staging

Switch to the staging branch and merge from xproject_dev

git co xproject_staging
git merge xproject_dev

Push your copy of the staging branch to the gihub repository:

git push origin xproject_staging

Dump the production database to this file db/production_data.sql on the production server, download it to the local folder db/production_data.sql, the cleans up the production db/ folder.

cap xproject_production db:fetch_remote_db

Push the production database from the local db/production_data.sql to the staging server, then import the data into the database on staging, then cleanup.

cap xproject_staging db:push_remote_db

Run any migrations on the staging server:

cap xproject_staging deploy:migrate

There may be rake tasks that need to be run to update or fix data in the database.

These should have corresponding capistrano tasks.

Test the staging server: http://xproject.staging.concord.org/

If the authors confirm that there are no blockers then let people know when the update will take place and perform these tasks on the production server.

• rigse:make:investigations This task simply finds all activities with no parent investigation, and creates a new investigation for that activity. The created investigation has the same name and description as the activity it contains.

We use haml for some templates, see: http://haml.hamptoncatlin.com/

To install this plugin we followed this procedure:

1. gem install --no-ri haml
2. haml --rails path/to/rigse_app

We use haml for some templates, see: http://haml.hamptoncatlin.com/

to install this plugin we followed this procedure:

1. gem install --no-ri haml
2. haml --rails path/to/rigse_app

Devise is already setup. The routes are setup, along with the mailers and observers. Forgotten password comes setup, so you don't have to mess around setting it up with every project.

Devise uses the pepper parameter within settings.yml to encrypt user passwords. A default pepper is provided in settings.samles.yml You need to change this when deploying to a public server.

Devise is also setup to use user activation. Users which require activation are sent emails automatically.

The app supports user registration and authentication via third party single sign using OAuth. Using this feature requires setting up OAuth credentials with the third party.

The app currently supports OAuth registration and authentication using Google and Schoology.

To set up single sign on with Google, follow the steps below.

1. Create a new Google app in console.developers.google.com.

2. Create a set of OAuth credentials for the app. For the "Authorized JS origin" value use the valid public domain that resolves to your copy of the app on the web. For the "Authorized redirect URI" value use https://[your domain]/users/auth/google/callback.

3. Take the Client ID and Client Secret values created in step two and add them as values for GOOGLE_CLIENT_KEY (Client ID) and GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET (Client Secret) in your app's .env file.

4. Restart the app.

Create a set of OAuth credentials for the app following the steps above, but for the "Authorized JS origin" value use a valid public top level domain that resolves to 127.0.0.1. Google won't accept 127.0.0.1 or a domain like app.portaldocker.local. An easy option is to use https://lvh.me which resolves to 127.0.0.1 without requiring any special configuration of your computer.

For the "Authorized redirect URI" value use https://[your domain]:[your port number]/users/auth/google/callback. If, for example, you use lvh.me and Docker is serving your portal over port 32789, the value would be https://lvh.me:32789/users/auth/google/callback.

We use will_paginate in pretty much every project we use.

You don't want your applications to crash and burn so Exception Notifier is already installed to let you know when everything goes to shit.

config/initializers/exception_notifier.rb does the setup. Currently it reads "admin_email" from config/settings.yml and use it as the destination address. The setup can be modified to include multiple email addresses. See the homepage readme of exception notifier.

It seems rails 2.3.3 and 2.3.4 fails to deliver emails when someone passes multiple destination addresses as an array, which exception notifier does. config/initializers/fix_mailer_on_rails_2.3.4.rb fixes the problem.

The code is borrowed from Dmitry Polushkin

On OS X the mysql2 gem usually can't find the mysql client library that it needs to run. The command below fixes that. It assumes your mysql is installed in the default basedir of /usr/local/mysql/lib. And it assumes you are using bundler.

install_name_tool -change libmysqlclient.16.dylib /usr/local/mysql/lib/libmysqlclient.16.dylib \
  `bundle show mysql2`/lib/mysql2/mysql2.bundle

For newer versions of rvm and mysql2, you will see an error like this

dlopen(/Users/scytacki/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p545/extensions/x86_64-darwin-13/\
  1.9.1/mysql2-0.3.15/mysql2/mysql2.bundle, 9): Library not loaded: libmysqlclient.18.dylib
  Referenced from: /Users/scytacki/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p545/extensions/x86_64-darwin-13/\
    1.9.1/mysql2-0.3.15/mysql2/mysql2.bundle
  Reason: image not found - /Users/scytacki/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p545/extensions/x86_64-darwin-13/\
    1.9.1/mysql2-0.3.15/mysql2/mysql2.bundle

So then to fix a command like this is needed:

install_name_tool -change libmysqlclient.18.dylib /usr/local/mysql/lib/libmysqlclient.18.dylib \
  /Users/scytacki/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p545/extensions/x86_64-darwin-13/1.9.1/mysql2-0.3.15/mysql2/mysql2.bundle

The portal uses the"Rails 3 Asset Pipeline":http://guides.rubyonrails.org/asset_pipeline.html stylesheets, images, javascript should all be placed in the app/assets/ directory structure. theme specific assets should be placed in app/assets/theme/themename/.

You should read the Rails guide for more information about the asset Pipeline.

themes_for_rails has been configured to play nice with the asset pipeline. See the initializer: config/initializers/themes_for_rails.rb

cap deploy should trigger the rake task assets:precompile to run.

You can also run locally by hand: bundle exec rake assets:precompile

The assets will be compiled to public/assets which should be ignored by .gitignore

When running in development mode you do not need to pre-compile your assets.

Sunspot is being used to provide search capabilities.

You will need to create solr cores if you want to update materials or publish. At the least you will need a 'development' solr core. Here is a basic set of directions:

1. Make sure there are no solr processes running with ps auxxwww | grep solr
2. scp -r [email protected]:/web/portal/shared/solr-template solr
3. cp -r ./solr/production ./solr/development
4. vim ./solr/development/core.properties (change name from production to development)
5. bundle exec rake sunspot:solr:start
6. bundle exec rake sunspot:solr:reindex (edited)

You could also create a test core by repeating steps 3 & 4.

In development mode you will need to create an index and start sunspot:

bundle exec rake sunspot:solr:start
bundle exec rake sunspot:reindex

You can then visit the web interface to the solar server by visiting localhost:8982/solr/admin/. Though I haven't found any good reason to do so.

For rspec tests see the helper methods defined in spec/support/solr_spec_helper.rb

For cucumber tests, you can use "Given The materials have been indexed" to update solr indexes after fixture data has been loaded.

https://github.com/sunspot/sunspot/wiki/RSpec-and-Sunspot

If you make changes to how Solr does its indexing, you will have to run a cap task to tell it to reindex:

In theory a simple bundle exec cap <host> solr:reindex should work, but to be sure use: bundle exec cap <host> solr:hard_reindex to restart and reindex.

There is a settings.yml file that contains site-wide stuff. The site name, url and admin email are all used in the Devise mailers, so you don't need to worry about editing them.

Certain features of the portal are controlled via environment variables.

The PORTAL_FEATURES environment variable can take a string of the form "feature1 feature2" to include the following features:

• allow_cors: Allow CORS requests (see below)

If CORS is enable, by default it will allow any request from '*.concord.org', to any route, but can be controlled by two additional environment variables:

• CORS_ORIGINS="x.example.com y.z.example.org": Sets the allowed CORS origins to a specific whitelist
• CORS_RESOURCES="/xyz": Sets the allowed CORS resources to a specific route

Here is a brief list of things which need to be looked into:

• the embeddables should be dryed up with some mixin / super class.
• not all embeddables are using send_update_events, which is causing stale pages.
• ocassionally browser rendering gets wonky and raw html and or javascript get displayed in the page.
• transition to unobtrusive JS.
• send_update_events might not do what we want it to do, tests should be written for it.

• password and password_confirmation are set up to be filtered
• there is a default application layout file
• a page title helper has been added
• index.html is already deleted
• rails.png is already deleted
• a few changes have been made to the default views
• a default css file with blank selectors for common rails elements

A set of rake tasks is available under the archive_portal namespace that enable the portal data to be archived. These tasks are:

• archive_portal:extract_and_upload_images - extracts the image binary data from the database and uploads it to S3
• archive_portal:generate_teacher_reports - generates learner details reports for all teachers and uploads them to S3
• archive_portal:generate_runnable_reports - generates learner details reports for all runnables and uploads them to S3

The rake tasks use a config file at /config/archive_portal.yml to specify the S3 bucket parameters to use when extracting images and to use when generating the url to those images in the reports. A /config/archive_portal.sample.yml file exists to be copied and updated with real values.

These tasks will take a long time. Easiest way to run them is to ssh to running server and run them in the background using nohup, e.g.:

nohup bundle exec rake archive_portal:extract_and_upload_images &

You can close your ssh session and the task will be still running. Logs will be saved in nohup.out.

As of 2020-06-12 we are in the process of moving some administrative functions to a new technology stack. See the New Admin interface documentation

CC Rails Portal is released under the MIT License.