Focus Help Center

This repository contains the Focus Help Center, which is a standalone Express (NodeJS) app that you can deploy anywhere to provide a help center for your application(s), whether they are built with Focus or not.

The app provides two views to consult the articles:

• A "full-blown" view (called "Back Office") which provides the full experience, including the redaction of articles
• An "embedded" view (called "Extension") which is supposed to be inserted and shown on demand in another application.

How to deploy?

The server and client sides are developped separately (respectively in the api and app directories), so they can be served by different servers if that suits your needs. The most convenient way to deploy is to package both apps together and have the server serve the client as static content, and that's the purpose of the postinstall script in the root package.json. The script requires the dependencies of both apps to be installed separately first before execution, and it will deliver a dist folder containing the packaged app. The command to launch the app with the default configuration is node default.js, from inside the dist folder.

Customization

The server side of the Help Center is meant to be customizable to allow anyone to inject their own login and environment logics. The index.js file exports the basic elements to build the server and the default.js file is the default implementation, and you are encouraged to build your own. In particular, the basic build doesn't include any service (only the article service is mandatory, so you have to put it somewhere in your own config) and doesn't serve anything. The best way to understand what's expected is to take a look at the default.js file.

Configuration

The config.js file exports a setConfig method you can use to specify the location of the DB file (which defaults in dist/db/db.sqlite') and URLs for navigation between apps (Back Office -> App and Extension -> Back Office). The server must publish a service that gives the URLs to the client, which is the configServicemethod of theindex.js` file.

Database

You have to build the database by calling db/init.js either directly or requiring it into your own script if you want to specify another path for the database with setConfig.

Login

The Help Center only manages one login information: a connected boolean that represents the right of a user to access the edition module. It expects the value of this boolean to be included with each request, accessible in Express in req.user.signedIn.

By default, the app uses a token-based authentification (managed by the application) and the client is configured to save and use this token in requests. The default signin service (which you are welcome not to use) defines a GET and a POST route at /signin that the client will request to login (POST) and to get the login information (GET). In addition to the connected boolean, if you provide a userName attribute to the response of the GET request, the client will understand that the server uses an external login provider, which has its own login form.

There are then two ways of handling login. Your signin service must then define in those cases:

• Internal login: GET and POST /signin routes. GET must return {connected: boolean} or {error: string}. POST will be called for both login and logout.
• External login: GET /signin and GET /signout routes. GET /signin must return {connected: boolean, userName: string} or {error: string} and GET /signout should call the external login provider.

Note that POST /signin is an ajax call but GET /signout is a regular call (with a <a> tag).

Also note that POST /signin being only defined on the internal login logic means that you cannot login from the application to an external login provider. Which is obvious, since it would be an internal login otherwise.

Truth be told, the login system is the highest common denominator between the original implementation and the first project's to implement it, so it might need to be expanded in the future to support more scenarios. In particular, the distinction between internal and external lies in the existence or not of userName, which makes impossible for an internal login to use it.

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Then, you can use whatever you like to handle the login. To store the session on the client, you can use cookies (they will be included with all requests automaticaly). You could also use a token, but they're only supported with internal login, and POST /signin should return {token}.

Environment

You are free to start the server in the way that suits you the most. The services provided by the server (that you have to include in your own default.js file) take a route prefix as first parameter which should handle most environment constraints.

Development

Server

• The server must run on Node > 6
• The server is an Express app
• The API is described using Swagger, so it can be requested by Swagger UI (which is served on the standalone server instead of the app).
• The server uses a SQLite database, which is stored in a file in api/dist/db/db.sqlite. It can be generated with the db-init script (once the app has been built), or with db-init:prod to create an empty database.
• The server is entirely written in Typescript, which compiles into plain ES2015. The build process (gulp) pipes the Typescript result into Babel, configured with the babel-preset-node6 to fill the missing gaps in Node 6's ES2015 implementation.

Client

• The client uses a React/Redux/React-Router stack.
• The client directory is divided into 3 subdirectories back-office, extension and common. Only view-specific content is located under its respective view directory, and all the logic (including back office-only components such as the edition) is under common.
• The client is partially written in Typescript, mainly actions, reducers and tests. There's a definitions folder in common which must contain all type definitions for all state and actions objects for use in actions and reducers.