budibase/docs/CONTRIBUTING.md

Contributing

From opening a bug report to creating a pull request: every contribution is appreciated and welcome. If you're planning to implement a new feature or change the api please create an issue first. This way we can ensure that your precious work is not in vain.

Table of contents

• Where to start
• Contributor Licence Agreement
• Glossary of Terms
• Contributing to Budibase

Not Sure Where to Start?

Budibase is a low-code web application builder that creates svelte-based web applications.

Budibase is a monorepo managed by lerna. Lerna manages the building and publishing of the budibase packages. At a high level, here are the packages that make up budibase.

• packages/builder - contains code for the budibase builder client side svelte application.

• packages/client - A module that runs in the browser responsible for reading JSON definition and creating living, breathing web apps from it.

• packages/server - The budibase server. This Koa app is responsible for serving the JS for the builder and budibase apps, as well as providing the API for interaction with the database and file system.

• packages/worker - This Koa app is responsible for providing global apis for managing your budibase installation. Authentication, Users, Email, Org and Auth configs are all provided by the worker.

Contributor License Agreement (CLA)

In order to accept your pull request, we need you to submit a CLA. You only need to do this once. If you are submitting a pull request for the first time, just submit a Pull Request and our CLA Bot will give you instructions on how to sign the CLA before merging your Pull Request.

All contributors must sign an Individual Contributor License Agreement.

If contributing on behalf of your company, your company must sign a Corporate Contributor License Agreement. If so, please contact us via community@budibase.com.

If for any reason, your first contribution is in a PR created by other contributor, please just add a comment to the PR with the following text to agree our CLA: "I have read the CLA Document and I hereby sign the CLA".

Glossary of Terms

To understand the budibase API, it can be helpful to understand the top level entities that make up Budibase.

Client

A client represents a single budibase customer. Each budibase client will have 1 or more budibase servers. Every client is assigned a unique ID.

App

A client can have one or more budibase applications. Budibase applications would be things like "Developer Inventory Management" or "Goat Herder CRM". Think of a budibase application as a tree.

Database

An App can have one or more databases. Keeping with our dendrology analogy - think of an database as a branch on the tree. Databases are used to keep data separate for different instances of your app. For example, if you had a CRM app, you may create a database for your US office, and a database for your Australian office. Databases allow us to support multitenancy in budibase applications.

Table

Tables in budibase are almost akin to tables in relational databases. A table may be a "Car" or an "Employee". They are the main building blocks for the creation and management of backend data in budibase.

View

A View is an advanced feature in budibase that allows you to write a custom query using MapReduce queries. Views enable powerful query functionality and calculations, allowing you to do more with your data.

Page

A page in budibase is actually a single, self contained svelte web app. There are only 2 pages in budibase. The login page and the main page.

Screen

A screen is a component within a single page. Generally, screens represent client side routes, and can be switched without refreshing the page.

Component

A component is the basic frontend building block of a budibase app.

Component Library

Component libraries are collections of components as well as the definition of their props contained in a file called components.json.

Contributing to Budibase

• Please maintain the existing code style.

• Please try to keep your commits small and focused.

• Please write tests.

• If the project diverges from your branch, please rebase instead of merging. This makes the commit graph easier to read.

• Once your work is completed, please raise a PR against the develop branch with some information about what has changed and why.

Getting Started For Contributors

1. Prerequisites

1.1 NodeJs and python

• NodeJS version 14.x.x
• Python version 3.x

1.1.1 Using asdf (recommended)

Asdf is a package manager that allows managing multiple dependencies. If can be installed either:

1. Run script (recommended): ./scripts/install-contributor-dependencies.sh
2. Or, manual installation steps: https://asdf-vm.com/guide/getting-started.html
   • asdf plugin add nodejs
   • asdf plugin add python

1.1.2 Using NVM

https://github.com/nvm-sh/nvm#installing-and-updating

---

1.2 Install yarn

yarn - npm install -g yarn

2. Clone this repository

git clone https://github.com/Budibase/budibase.git

then cd into your local copy.

3. Install and Build

| NOTE: On Windows, all yarn commands must be executed on a bash shell (e.g. git bash)

To develop the Budibase platform you'll need Docker and Docker Compose installed.

Quick method

yarn setup will check that all necessary components are installed and setup the repo for usage.

Manual method

The following commands can be executed to manually get Budibase up and running (assuming Docker/Docker Compose has been installed).

yarn to install project dependencies

yarn bootstrap will install all budibase modules and symlink them together using lerna.

yarn build will build all budibase packages.

4. Running

To run the budibase server and builder in dev mode (i.e. with live reloading):

1. Open a new console
2. yarn dev (from root)
3. Access the builder on http://localhost:10000/builder

This will enable watch mode for both the builder app, server, client library and any component libraries.

5. Debugging using VS Code

To debug the budibase server and worker a VS Code launch configuration has been provided.

Visit the debug window and select Budibase Server or Budibase Worker to debug the respective component. Alternatively to start both components simultaneously select Start Budibase.

In addition to the above, the remaining budibase components may be run in dev mode using: yarn dev:noserver.

6. Cleanup

If you wish to delete all the apps created in development and reset the environment then run the following:

1. yarn nuke:docker will wipe all the Budibase services
2. yarn dev will restart all the services

Backend

For the backend we run Redis, CouchDB, MinIO and NGINX in Docker compose. This means that to develop Budibase you will need Docker and Docker compose installed. The backend services are then run separately as Node services with nodemon so that they can be debugged outside of Docker.

Data Storage

When you are running locally, budibase stores data on disk using docker volumes. The volumes and the types of data associated with each are:

• redis_data
  • Sessions, email tokens
• couchdb3_data
  • Global and app databases
• minio_data
  • App manifest, budibase client, static assets

Development Modes

A combination of environment variables controls the mode budibase runs in.

| NOTE: You need to clean your browser cookies when you change between different modes.

Yarn commands can be used to mimic the different modes as described in the sections below:

Self Hosted

The default mode. A single tenant installation with no usage restrictions.

To enable this mode, use:

yarn mode:self

Cloud

The cloud mode, with account portal turned off.

To enable this mode, use:

yarn mode:cloud

Cloud & Account

The cloud mode, with account portal turned on. This is a replica of the mode that runs at https://budibase.app

To enable this mode, use:

yarn mode:account

CI

An overview of the CI pipelines can be found here

Pro

@budibase/pro is the closed source package that supports licensed features in budibase. By default the package will be pulled from NPM and will not normally need to be touched in local development. If you require to update code inside the pro package it can be cloned to the same root level as budibase, e.g.

.
|_ budibase
|_ budibase-pro

Note that only budibase maintainers will be able to access the pro repo.

The yarn bootstrap command can be used to replace the NPM supplied dependency with the local source aware version. This is achieved using the yarn link command. To see specifically how dependencies are linked see scripts/link-dependencies.sh. The same link script is used to link dependencies to account-portal in local dev.

Troubleshooting

Sometimes, things go wrong. This can be due to incompatible updates on the budibase platform. To clear down your development environment and start again follow Step 6. Cleanup, then proceed from Step 3. Install and Build in the setup guide above to create a fresh Budibase installation.

Running tests

End-to-end Tests

Budibase uses Cypress to run a number of E2E tests. To run the tests execute the following command in the root folder:

yarn test:e2e

Or if you are in the builder you can run yarn cy:test.

Other Useful Information

• The contributors are listed in AUTHORS.md (add yourself).

• This project uses a modified version of the MPLv2 license, see LICENSE.

• We use the C4 (Collective Code Construction Contract) process for contributions. Please read this if you are unfamiliar with it.