joshuaasmith / relief-student

The boilerplate starter pack for the relief tracker database project.

Relief Tracker Starter Pack

Starter project for the Relief Tracker data access layer (DAL). This README provides guidance installing CouchDB, curl, and the relief-student repository on your local machine.

Installing CouchDB using the installer

Both Mac OS X and Windows users can download the CouchDB installer. Mac OS X users have the additional option of installing via Homebrew.

Be sure to approve the installer to install CouchDB as service and let it be started automatically after installation.

0. Windows and OS X users can download and run the Installer for your particular operating system.

• Installation on Windows
• Installation on Mac OS X

0. Install with Homebrew (Mac OS X only)

Installing curl

Use the curl Download Wizard to help you select the correct zip file to download for your operating system. The zip file should contain an executable file named curl.exe. If you unzip the file and don't see the .exe file, you've downloaded the wrong file.

Windows users will need to be sure and select the correct Operating system (Win32 or Win64).

Windows users

• Extract the contents of the zip file. If you have downloaded the correct version you should find curl.exe.

• Place curl.exe in a folder where you keep your software (e.g. D:\software\curl\curl.exe)

• To run curl from the command line, you must ensure the .exe is in your system path.

  • Right click My Computer
  • Select Properties
  • Click Advanced system settings link
  • On the Advanced tab, select the Environment Variables button.
  • Under System variable select 'Path' and edit.
  • Add a semicolon followed by the path to where you placed your curl.exe file. (e.g.: D:\software\curl)

Verify curl

Tacoboy is a fun place to eat. Just look at their menu: (http://www.tacoboy.net/menu.html). When you use an HTTP client (such as Chrome) to browse a website, the client must first establish a TCP connection with the HTTP "Web" server using the IP address associated with the host part of the URL (www.tacoboy.net). The connection is made, by default, on port 80. The browser issues a request to download a resource (usually a web page) using the host portion of the URL (www.tacoboy.net) and a path to the resource (/menu.html). Behind the scenes, the browser issues a HTTP GET request to retrieve and download the HTML to the browser. Assuming a successful response, the browser renders the HTML into something that looks delicious.

Issuing an HTTP GET with curl:

$ curl http://www.tacoboy.net/menu.html

If you get back the html for the menu, curl is properly installed.

Verify the CouchDB install

Run the following curl command to test whether CouchDB is running:

$ curl http://127.0.0.1:5984/

If couch is running, you'll get back some JSON with a welcome message. The example below has been formatted for display purposes:

{
    "couchdb": "Welcome",
    "uuid": "c00e67dce09804896c2e664e6113a370",
    "version": "1.6.1",
    "vendor": {
        "name": "Homebrew",
        "version": "1.6.1_6"
    }
}

If you receive an error, you may need to start couch.

Starting Couchdb

Using Homebrew (OSX)

If you did not see the "Welcome" message, you'll need to start CouchDB. If you've installed CouchDB via Homebrew (OSX), you can start CouchDB as a background service:

$ brew services start couchdb

Running CouchDB in a session

If you don't want CouchDB running all the time in the background, you can run it temporarily by running:

$ couchdb

If you want to issue additional curl commands, you'll have to do so in separate terminal session.

Installing Atom

A lot of our code is demo'd using Atom. It's a very nice (and free) text editor created by GitHub. You can download and install from the Atom website.

For more information on how to set up Atom, see How to Set up Atom 1.0 with your Preferences

Installing the relief-student repository

The following assumes you have already set up Git on your laptop. If not, do so now before continuing.

• Fork the relief-student repo.

  A fork is a copy of a repository. Forking a repository allows you to freely experiment with changes without affecting the original project.

  Most commonly, forks are used to either propose changes to someone else's project or to use someone else's project as a starting point for your own idea. More...

• On GitHub, navigate to your fork of the relief-student repository.

• Under your repository name, click Clone or download.

• In the Clone with HTTPs section, click the clipboard icon to copy the clone URL for the repository.

• Open Terminal (Mac OSX) or Command Prompt (Windows).

• Ensure you are in your preferred parent directory using the cd command.

• Type git clone, and then paste the URL you copied . It will look like this, with your GitHub username instead of YOUR-USERNAME:

  $ git clone https://github.com/YOUR-USERNAME/relief-student
  

• Press Enter. Your local clone will be created. A new project directory named relief-student now exists on your computer.

• Using Terminal/Command Prompt, Change to the project's directory

  $ cd relief-student
  

• run npm install to install the project's dependencies.

  $ npm install
  

• program.js is the starting point for your application. Within Terminal, run the application:

  $ NODE_ENV=production node program.js
  

  In Terminal, you should notice the following message:

  Success!

  If you see this message, congratulations!