Skip to content

README.md

Latest commit

 

History

History
executable file
·
50 lines (36 loc) · 3.2 KB

README.md

File metadata and controls

executable file
·
50 lines (36 loc) · 3.2 KB

the-power-of-without

The Power of Without is a collaborative initiative among institutions and local communities for identifying cost-efficient, lightweight infrastructure systems for deployment in informal settlements, to foster sustainable, resilient, and autonomous communities. A taxonomy, and methodology based in a set of workshops and classes has been developed to learn from informality.

https://www.media.mit.edu/projects/power-of-without-1/overview/

Getting Started

This project runs off a Node.js backend, with a MongoDB database. Follow these steps to run the project locally:

Configuring Dependencies

(This step only needs to be done once)

  • Clone the repository locally: git clone https://github.com/guadalupebabio/ThePowerofWithout.git

  • In the project folder, install the packages: npm install

    • Make sure npm is installed. If not, you can follow the instructions to download it here.

  • Install gulp locally: npm install -g gulp. This is necessary to compile the styles from SCSS to CSS.

  • The database is hosted on MongoDB Cloud (may be migrated to another service in the future), and requires some security configuration in order for you to connect to it:

    • Email me so I can add you as an admin on the database
    • In the "Security" tab on MongoDB Cloud's dashboard, click "Database Access" and make a new database user for yourself (see below).
    • Create a file in the root directory of the repository called .env with the following layout (there is a third party database we integrate with this app, so you should also include these credentials):
    MONGODB_USERNAME=<the database username you just created>
MONGODB_PASSWORD=<the database password you just created>
APP_MONGODB_USERNAME=<email me, jjshen@mit.edu for these credentials>
APP_MONGODB_PASSWORD=<email me, jjshen@mit.edu for these credentials>

    Importantly, this file is in the gitignore because you should not publish these credentials. Keep this file safe and private.

Running the Server

(This step should be run everytime)

  • Run node index.js in the project repository
  • Run gulp in another terminal tab. This is necessary to compile your SCSS to CSS.
  • If everything works properly, going to localhost:3000 in your browser should work.
  • Important: everytime you change the code, you need to re-run node index.js for the changes to be reflected.
    • (This is really annoying, so a potential workaround is node-dev, which automatically restarts node on any changes to the code. Once you've installed node-dev, you can run node-dev index.js instead of node index.js.

Project Organization

  • index.js: The main Node.js file
  • app: All other Node.js files are here
  • public: Everything in this folder is a static file served by the frontend (don't include sensitive information here). Read more about this type of folder here.
  • util: This folder is deprecated, don't worry about it.
  • views: This folder contains the Pug layouts which are rendered by the backend. Read more about Pug files here.