Wx Files Frontend

UI for the PCIC Weather Files service.

This app provides an interface for selecting and downloading weather files (wx files).

Configuration

Wx Files is configured using
environment variables (for basic configuration such as backend URLs).

Environment variables

In a Create React App app, environment variables are managed carefully. Therefore, most of the environment variables below begin with REACT_APP_, as required by CRA.

CRA also provides a convenient system for setting default values of environment variables in various contexts (development, production, etc.).

Brief summary:

• .env: Global default settings
• .env.development: Development-specific settings (npm start)
• .env.production: Production-specific settings (npm run build)

For more details, see the CRA documentation.

Environment variables for configuring the app are:

PUBLIC_URL

• Base URL for for Plan2Adapt frontend app.
• For production, set this to the URL for Plan2Adapt configured in our proxy server.

REACT_APP_VERSION

• Version of the app.
• This value should be set using generate-commitish.sh when the Docker image is built (see below).
• It is not recommended to manually override the automatically generated value when the image is run.
• No default value for this variable is provided in any .env file.

REACT_APP_WX_FILES_SERVICE_URL

• URL of Wx Files metadata/data service.

NODE_ENV

• Automatically set; cannot be overridden manually.

Docker

We use Docker for dev/staging/test and production deployments.

Manual processes

In general, PCIC DevOps automates Docker image building in our repositories, and PCIC IT manages production deployment (using docker-compose).
However, it can be useful to manually build and run a production Docker image.

Build docker image

docker build -t wx-files-frontend \
    --build-arg REACT_APP_VERSION="$(./generate-commitish.sh)" .

IMPORTANT: Setting the build arg REACT_APP_VERSION as above is the most reliable way to inject an accurate version id into the final app. This value can be overridden when the image is run (by specifying the environment variable of the same name), but it is not recommended, as it invites error.

Run docker image

As described above, environment variables configure the app. All are given default development and production values in the files .env, .env.development, and .env.production.

These can be overridden at run time by providing them in the docker run command (-e option), or, equivalently, in the appropriate docker-compose.yaml element.

Typical run:

docker run --restart=unless-stopped -d \
  -p <external port>:8080 \
  --name wx-files-frontend \
  wx-files-frontend:<tag>

Project initialization

This project was initialized using create-react-app. For details see Project initialization.

Releasing a new version

1. Increment version in package.json.

2. Summarize the changes from the last version in NEWS.md.

3. Commit these changes, then tag the release, and push all to GitHub, including tag:

   git add package.json NEWS.md
   git commit -m "Bump to version x.x.x"
   git tag -a -m "x.x.x" x.x.x
   git push --follow-tags