Skip to main content

Starting the Application

info

We’re currently making rapid changes to the product so our docs may be out of date. If you need help, please email yo@forem.com.

We're a Rails app, and we use Webpacker to manage some of our JavaScript.

Starting the application

Start the application, Webpack, and our job runner Sidekiq by running:

bin/startup

(This just runs foreman start -f Procfile.dev, for notes on how to install Foreman, please see Other Tools)

Then point your browser to http://localhost:3000/ to view the site. To log in use the admin account created by default (see Database)

If you run into issues while trying to run bin/setup and the error message isn't helpful, try running bin/rails s -p 3000. For example, you may need to yarn install before starting the app.

If Sidekiq is producing errors similar to No such file or directory - [SOME FILE], you may need to start Sidekiq by itself once to help it initialize itself fully. You can use the command bundle exec sidekiq to do this.

If you're working on Forem regularly, you can use alias start="bin/startup" to make this even easier. 😊

If you're using pry for debugging in Rails, note that using foreman and pry together works, but it's not as clean as bin/rails server.

Here are some singleton commands you may need, usually in a separate instance/tab of your shell.

  • Running the job Sidekiq server (if using bin/rails server) -- this is mostly for notifications and emails: bundle exec sidekiq

Current gotchas: potential environment issues with external services need to be worked out.

Starting the application (advanced)

To have additional control in your local environment, you might prefer using an advanced setup to start the application by using Overmind.

The prerequisite is to install Overmind, a process manager which takes advantage of tmux.

This will allow you to launch all your app's processes in the same terminal, navigate the logs of each service separately, restart each service separately and have a better debugging experience.

After installing Overmind, launch the application:

overmind s -f Procfile.dev

Debugging the Rails application​

Overmind lets you easily step through the Rails application in a debugging session.

Using the pry gem, you can add a binding.pry to set a breakpoint in the method you're trying to debug; the application will halt its execution there. You can then connect to the web server by opening a separate terminal window and typing:

overmind c web

This will open up a tmux window pane at the debugging statement position, which will look something like this:

pry(#<Admin::OverviewController>)> whereami

From: /forem/app/controllers/admin/overview_controller.rb:8 Admin::OverviewController#index:

    5: def index
    6:   a = "Hello debugger"
    7:   binding.pry
 => 8: end

Inspecting the logs of each service​

Overmind launches the various services required for our local setup: web (the Rails web server), webpacker (the server managing JavaScript) and sidekiq (the server managing the asynchronous queue).

If, for example, you want to inspect just the Sidekiq logs, you can open a separate terminal window to look at those logs specifically:

overmind c sidekiq

This will open a tmux console, which will allow you to browse only the Sidekiq logs.

There are also some handy tmux shortcuts that you may find useful.

  • The shortcut C-b [ (Control-b-open square bracket) activates "scroll mode", which allows you to use the arrows up and down and inspect the logs.
  • The shortcut q deactivates "scroll mode".

Please refer to tmux documentation for more information around tmux configuration and for additional shortcuts.

Resources​

Other than the official Overmind and tmux documentation, you may find the following resources useful: