VA.gov

What is this?

This is the front end repository for VA.gov. It contains application code used across the site.

There are several repositories that contain the code and content used to build VA.gov. If you're looking to get started running VA.gov locally, you should read the Getting Started documentation.

Common commands

Once you have the site set up locally, these are some common commands you might find useful:

I want to...	Then you should...
fetch all dependencies	yarn install; run this any time package.json changes
build applications	yarn build
run the webpack dev server	yarn watch

Building vets-website

Building applications

vets-website uses Webpack to bundle application assets.

To build all applications, run the following:

yarn build

To build one or more applications, you can use the --entry option:

yarn build --entry static-pages,auth

To recompile your application when you make changes, run:

yarn watch

You can also limit the applications Webpack builds with --env.entry:

yarn watch --env.entry static-pages,auth

The entryname for your application can be found in its manifest.json file.

If you're developing a feature that requires the API, but can't or don't want to run it locally, you can specify --env.api:

yarn watch --env.api https://dev-api.va.gov

You will need to disable CORS in your browser when using a non-local API. Here are some helpful links that explain how to do this:

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3102819/disable-same-origin-policy-in-chrome
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4556429/disabling-same-origin-policy-in-safari

Note: If you try to log on, ID.me will redirect you to the environment that the API is set up for. So in the above example, you'd be redirected back to dev.va.gov.

Building static content

Static pages are created from the content-build repository. See the building static content documentation.

Building both together

After building the applications, running yarn build in the ../content-build directory will build content using the generated app bundles from vets-website/build/localhost/generated. The full build can be seen in ../content-build/build/localhost.

Running tests

Unit tests

To run all unit tests, use:

yarn test:unit

If you want to run only one test file, you can provide the path to it:

yarn test:unit src/applications/path/to/test-file.unit.spec.js

To run all tests for a folder in src/applications, you can use app-folder:

yarn test:unit --app-folder hca

To run all tests in a directory, you can use a glob pattern:

yarn test:unit src/applications/path/to/tests/**/*.unit.spec.js*

To run tests with stack traces, pass log-level trace:

yarn test:unit --log-level trace

To run tests with coverage output, you can pass the coverage option:

yarn test:unit --coverage

For help with test runner usage, you can run:

yarn test:unit --help

End-to-end (E2E) / Browser tests

• E2E or browser tests run in Cypress.

Before running Cypress tests, first make sure that:

1. vets-website is served locally on port 3001
   • You can do this with yarn watch
2. vets-api is NOT running
   • Any required APIs will be mocked by the Cypress test that needs them.

To open the Cypress test runner UI and run any tests within it:

yarn cy:open

To run Cypress tests from the command line:

yarn cy:run

To run specific Cypress tests from the command line:

# Running one specific test.
yarn cy:run --spec "path/to/test-file.cypress.spec.js"

# Running multiple specific tests.
yarn cy:run --spec "path/to/test-a.cypress.spec.js,path/to/test-b.cypress.spec.js"

# Running tests that match a glob pattern.
yarn cy:run --spec "src/applications/my-app/tests/*"
yarn cy:run --spec "src/applications/my-app/tests/**/*"

# Running tests that match multiple glob patterns.
yarn cy:run --spec "src/applications/a/tests/**/*,src/applications/b/tests/**/*"

To run Cypress tests from the command line on a specific browser:

yarn cy:run --headless --browser chrome
yarn cy:run --headless --browser firefox

# Without --headless, the test runner will open and run the test.
yarn cy:run --browser chrome
yarn cy:run --browser firefox

For other options with yarn cy:run, the same options for cypress run are applicable.

Contract tests

To run all contract tests locally:

yarn test:contract

To run a specific contract test:

BUILDTYPE=localhost yarn test:unit src/applications/my-app/tests/example.pact.spec.js

Running a mock API for local development

In separate terminal from your local dev server, run

yarn mock-api --responses path/to/responses.js

See the mocker-api usage documentation for how to use the responses.js.

If you need to log in, go to your browser dev tools console and enter localStorage.setItem('hasSession', true) and refresh the page. This will then trigger a /v0/user call, which will then get the mocked response of a logged-in user. (Assuming you've mocked that response, of course.)

Responses to common API requests, such as /v0/user and /v0/maintenance_windows, you can use src/platform/testing/local-dev-mock-api/common.js

const commonResponses = require('src/platform/testing/local-dev-mock-api/common');

module.exports = {
  ...commonResponses,
  'GET path/to/endpoint': { foo: 'bar' },
};

More commands

After a while, you may run into a less common task. We have a lot of commands for doing very specific things.

I want to...	Then you should...
build the production site (dev features disabled).	yarn build:production
deploy the production site (dev features disabled).	node src/platform/testing/e2e/test-server.js --buildtype=vagovprod
reset local environment (clean out node modules, Babel cache, and runs npm install)	yarn reset:env
run the app pages on the site for local development	yarn watch --env.scaffold
run the site for local development with automatic rebuilding of Javascript and sass with css sourcemaps	yarn watch:css-sourcemaps then visit http://localhost:3001/. You may also set --env.buildtype and NODE_ENV though setting NODE_ENV to production will make incremental builds slow.
run the site for local development with automatic rebuilding of code and styles for specific apps	yarn watch --env.entry disability-benefits,static-pages. Valid application names are in each app's manifest.json under entryName
run the site so that devices on your local network can access it	yarn watch --host 0.0.0.0 --public 192.168.x.x:3001 Note that we use CORS to limit what hosts can access different APIs, so accessing with a 192.168.x.x address may run into problems
watch file changes without starting the server	yarn watch:no-server
run all unit tests and watch	yarn test:watch
run only e2e tests	Make sure the site is running locally (yarn watch) and run the tests with yarn test:e2e
run e2e tests in headless mode	yarn test:e2e:headless
run all linters	yarn lint
run only javascript linter	yarn lint:js
run only sass linter	yarn lint:sass
run lint on JS and fix anything that changed	yarn lint:js:changed:fix
run automated accessibility tests	yarn build && yarn test:accessibility
run visual regression testing	Start the site. Generate your baseline image set using yarn test:visual:baseline. Make your changes. Then run yarn test:visual.
add new npm modules	yarn add my-module. Use the --dev flag for modules that are build or test related.
get the latest json schema	yarn update:schema. This updates our vets-json-schema vets-json-schema https://github.com/department-of-veterans-affairs/ to the most recent commit.
check test coverage	yarn test:coverage
run bundle analyzer on our production JS bundles	yarn build-analyze
generate a stats file for analysis by bundle analyzer	NODE_ENV=production yarn build:webpack --env.buildtype=vagovprod --env.analyzer.
load the analyzer tool on a stats file	yarn analyze
add a new React app	yarn new:app (make sure you have vagov-content and content-build sibling to vets-website)

Supported Browsers

Browser	Minimum version	Note
Internet Explorer	11
Microsoft Edge	13
Safari / iOS Safari	9
Chrome / Android Web view	44	Latest version with >0.5% of traffic
Firefox	52	Latest version with >0.5% of traffic

Additional Resources

1. VA.gov Knowledge Hub
2. Docs Directory
3. Manual and Automated 508 Testing