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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

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 master branch with some information about what has changed and why.

Getting Started For Contributors

1. Prerequisites

  • NodeJS version 22.x.x
  • Python version 3.x

Using asdf (recommended)

Asdf is a package manager that allows managing multiple dependencies.

You can install them following any of the steps described below:

  • Install using script (only for mac users):

./scripts/install-contributor-dependencies.sh

Using NVM and pyenv

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.

If you have access to the @budibase/pro submodule then please follow the Pro section of this guide before running the above command.

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 build will build all budibase packages.

If you have access to the @budibase/pro submodule then please follow the Pro section of this guide before running the above commands.

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 need to make an update to pro and have access to the repo, then you can update your submodule within the mono-repo by running git submodule update --init - from here you can use normal submodule flow to develop a change within pro.

Once you have updated to use the pro submodule, it will be linked into all of your local dependencies by NX as with all other monorepo packages. If you have been using the NPM version of @budibase/pro then you may need to run a git reset --hard to fix all of the pro versions back to 0.0.0 to be monorepo aware.

From here - to develop a change in pro, you can follow the below flow:

# enter the pro submodule
cd packages/pro
# get the base branch you are working from (same as monorepo)
git fetch
git checkout master
# create a branch, named the same as the branch in your monorepo
git checkout -b <some branch>
... make changes
# commit the changes you've made, with a message for pro
git commit <something>
# within the monorepo, add the pro reference to your branch, commit it with a message like "Update pro ref"
cd ../..
git add packages/pro
git commit <add the new reference to main repo>

From here, you will have created a branch in the pro repository and commited the reference to your branch on the monorepo. When you eventually PR this work back into the mainline branch, you will need to first merge your pro PR to the pro mainline, then go into your PR in the monorepo and update the reference again to the new mainline.

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

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

Unit Tests

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

yarn test

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