LaunchCode's Collab Blog

Note: In order to get the most out of this project, read this README completely.

About

LaunchCode provides an inclusive and supportive community to help get you started on your first large open source project.

This project is called Collab-Blog, and is a blog site where fellow LaunchCoders can share blog posts that cover a wide range of topics. Similar to Medium, Collab-Blog allows users to create new blogs and share them with other users! Collab-Blog is a full stack web application written in Angular, Spring Boot, and MySQL.

Your Task

You are going to help us build this project! We have written many user stories that you will help us complete. So first, let's give you a lay of the land.

Github issues are a great way for our open source project to stay organized. We will include all new features, improvements and bugs in this section. Don't worry if it's intimidating when you first look at all the issues. They are set up in a way that you will be a pro in no time! Let's get started.

1. Navigate to Issues. There you will see a few labels that we will use to give you an idea of what to expect with each Issue. For a deeper description of what these labels mean, you can look at their descriptions here.

2. Read through all the issues to get a good idea of what you'd like to tackle based on your interest and skill set. For your first contribution, we recommend you try out a 'good first issue' tag. Beyond that, have fun with it. This is a great way for you not only to expand your skills, but to build a fun project with other LaunchCoders.

How To Get Started

First things first, join the #open-source-project-work channel in the LaunchCode Community Slack workspace. There you'll be surrounded by other LaunchCoders working on this project. Once you do that, send a direct message to Rachel Rolon and John Woolbright letting them know that you're interested in working on the project.

Next, for this project, you will need MySQL with MySQL Workbench, Java 13, Node, Terminal and Angular installed locally.

But wait... that sounds like a lot. How do I get all of those installed?!

We're here to help. If you're one of our students who completed CoderGirl's Web Development Java track, or completed LC101 with Java, you already have everything you need installed. If you aren't no worries, here are all the links you need to get your computer set up for this project:

Installations

• Node (Also installs NPM cli)
• Terminal
• MySQL with MySQL Workbench
• Java
• Angular

Optional Installations

You are welcome to use any code editor that you prefer, but we highly recommend you use Visual Studio Code when working with Angular and IntelliJ when working with Spring Boot.

• Visual Studio Code
• IntelliJ

Take a little break, you've made it through a lot!

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Steps To Get Set Up Locally

You're making progress! Now let's get you set up locally so that you can start coding. Make sure to follow these steps in order.

Github Setup

1. Fork this repository (in the top right corner)
2. Clone your Forked version to your computer
3. Open the project in IntelliJ from the Collab-Blog/blog directory

Note: If your project is not indexing, you can trouble shoot with these steps. When it says Maven import detected, select import. You can alternatively open the project at pom.xml

Java and MySQL Setup

1. In IntelliJ, set up the Java JDK and choose Java 13. Documentation on setting up JDK
2. Open MySQL Workbench. You can view this video for a helpful walkthrough of a similar project: Setting up a Persistent Database
3. Create a new connection. Make sure to name your connection localhost
4. Create a schema called collab_blog
5. Create a new user collab_blog and a password you can remember for this use
6. Rachel and John will send you AWS S3 credentials. Reach out to them if you have not yet.

Configuration

1. In IntelliJ, click on Add Configurations
2. On the left side, click Templates, then Application.
3. In the Environment Variables Section, add your environment variables
4. You'll have 9 env variables:
   • DB_PORT
   • DB_HOST
   • DB_NAME
   • DB_USER
   • DB_PASSWORD
   • S3_ACCESS
   • S3_SECRET
   • S3_REGION
   • S3_BUCKET

For each environment variable, type in your value for each of the keys. For example, if you followed along with the above steps, your configuration will look something like this:

Name	Value
DB_HOST	localhost
DB_PORT	3308
DB_NAME	collab_blog
DB_USER	collab_blog
DB_PASSWORD	your password
S3_SECRET	your AWS secret key
S3_ACCESS	your AWS access key
S3_REGION	us-east-1
S3_BUCKET	launchcode-blog-images

Note: The values for the DB configurations should match the values entered in MySql.

Etc. Note: This part is a little tricky so reach out to Rachel and John if you are having any difficulty getting your local environment configured.

Angular Setup

1. Open Visual Studio Code
2. Open a terminal in VS Code and navigate to Collar-Blog/client. This is where your angular app will live.
3. Make sure Angular is installed in your project by typing ng version.
4. Type ng serve. You should see the angular app successfully compiling to localhost:4200.

 Troubleshooting, You may need to type npm install --save-devkit/build-angular if you are getting an error

Running Your Project

1. If you haven't already, open a terminal in VS Code and navigate to Collab-Blog/client. This is where your angular app will live. Type ng serve. You should see the angular app successfully compiling to localhost:4200.
2. In IntelliJ, run the main application from Collab-Blog/blog with Spring Boot Run.

Community and Contributing

Jump into our Slack! There you will be able to connect with other LaunchCoders and work through these challenges together. We encourage you to find a team of people to work with on these features.

Happy coding!