- About this application
- Running the application locally
- Application structure
- Versioning
- Releases & Deployments
The website is a simple express.js application, which uses nunjucks templating for the HTML, Sass for the CSS and JavaScript (with support for ES6) - all of which are compiled to plain HTML, CSS, JavaScript using npm scripts. We use various open source third party npm dependencies to achieve this, these are listed within the package.json file.
The website is built using the NHS.UK frontend library, so you can use any of the components within the NHS digital service manual.
To run the NHSX website locally you'll need to:
We recommend to use the long-term support (LTS) version of Nodejs, rather than the latest beta version.
Clone the repository git clone git@github.com:nhsx/nhsx-website.git nhsx-website, then whilst in the project directory cd nhsx-website, install the required npm packages with: npm install
Run the project in development mode npm run watch and visit http://localhost:3000.
.github/
GitHub specific files, such templates for pull requests and issues.
app/
This folder contains all the files you need for the website.
app/assets
Images, Documents etc
app/scripts
JavaScript
app/styles
CSS (Sass)
app/views
HTML (Nunjucks)
node_modules/ (Automatically generated)
Node package manager modules for third party dependencies. This folder is automatically generated when running npm install. Don't manually edit files in this folder as they will be deleted.
public/ (Automatically generated)
Automatically generated compiled files and build assets for the website. Don't manually edit files in this folder as they will be deleted.
Versioning follows a semver approach, with the version number being in the package.json file and a CHANGELOG.md file documenting the changes between each release. For best practice, the version number should be bumped and a change log entry added for each release.
Deployments to the staging environment https://nhsx-website-stag-uks.azurewebsites.net/ happen when changes are made to the master branch. Pull requests are required to make any changes to the master branch, which require at least 1 person to approve the pull request, usually a project maintainer.
To release to the live environment https://www.nhsx.nhs.uk/, create a new tag and release under the GitHub releases page. The live environment sits behind a service called Akamai, a firewall and cache, the cache is set to 20 minutes so it will be around 20 minutes until you see the changes after releasing.