index.md

Introduction to consumerfinance.gov

This is the documentation for the consumerfinance.gov project that powers the www.consumerfinance.gov website. It is organized thematically in order to create a central repository for all information pertaining to consumerfinance.gov.

Disclaimer

This project is a work in progress. Nothing presented in this repo—whether in the source code, issue tracker, or wiki—is a final product unless it is marked as such or appears on www.consumerfinance.gov. In-progress updates may appear on beta.consumerfinance.gov.

Technology stack

The standard technology stack for development of consumerfinance.gov within the CFPB consists of the following base:

• macOS
• Homebrew - package manager for installing system software on OSX
• Python 3.8 and pip (Python package manager)
• Jinja2 templates for front-end rendering. See requirements/libraries.txt for version.
• Wagtail CMS for content administration. See requirements/wagtail.txt for version.
• PostgreSQL 13.13 is the database we use in production and locally.
• Psycopg is the Python library that lets Python talk to Postgres. See requirements/libraries.txt for current version.
• Additional dependencies, listed below.

Additional dependencies

• Elasticsearch: Used for full-text search capabilities and content indexing.
• Node and yarn: Used for downloading and managing front-end dependencies and assets. Front-end dependencies are listed in the project's package.json file.
• pyenv
• pyenv-virtualenv

Versions

Versions for most front-end packages are kept updated in the project's package.json file.

Versions for back-end software including Django, Wagtail, Jinja, etc. are kept in the project's requirements files: https://github.com/cfpb/consumerfinance.gov/tree/main/requirements

• base.txt: shortcut for django.txt + wagtail.txt + libraries.txt
• ci.txt: specific requirements for the continuous integration environment. Should/could be moved to CI configuration files?
• deployment.txt: requirements for deployment, includes base.txt and a New Relic library that we don't install anywhere else.
• django.txt: specifies the Django version. The file is used when running the site, but by having it separate we can test against other versions of Django by excluding this file.
• docs.txt: requirements to build the consumerfinance.gov docs.
• libraries.txt: Python libraries.
• local.txt: includes base.txt and some useful libraries when developing locally.
• scripts.txt: Requirements for running certain jobs on Jenkins, so scripts can run in Jenkins without having to install all the other requirements.
• test.txt: requirements for running Python tests.
• wagtail.txt: specifies Wagtail version. In its own file to make it easier to test multiple versions, same as with django.txt.