retro-board

This is a Retrospective Idea board, powering retrospected.com.

 

       

 

This project is both an actual product, and also a technology demo using the latest and greatest JavaScript/TypeScript libraries of the month.

It features the following technologies:

• React 16
• React Hooks
• React Router 4
• Mono Repo / Yarn Workspaces
• TypeScript
• Hot-reloading
• Socket IO
• Webpack 4 (See older versions for Webpack 1, 2 and 3)
• Material UI design
• Styled Components
• Multilingual / Internationalization
• Postgres (optional), defaults to NeDB (in-process)
• Jest for Unit Testing
• React Testing Library, for Integration Tests
• Yarn, replacing NPM
• Docker, for easy deployment
• Kubernetes, to scale Retrospected for its 10M+ users (not)
• Travis, for Continuous Integration and Deployment (CI/CD)

Previous versions, up to v1.0.1 featured the following libraries:

• Redux
• CSS Modules
• redux-saga
• reselect
• ESLint for JS and JSX

Prerequisites 💿

• Yarn: Please install Yarn, as this mono-repo uses Yarn Workspaces which won't work with NPM.

How to try it out (Mac / Linux) 🚀

• Clone this repository
• Switch to the master branch (the default is develop which might not be stable: git checkout master)
• yarn to install the dependencies (not npm i!)
• yarn start to transpile the server, run the server on port 8080 and start the UI
• Open your browser on http://localhost:3000

How to try it out (Windows) 🚀

Follow the steps in "How to run for development" below.

How to run for development 📝

• Clone this repository
• yarn to install the dependencies (not npm i!)
• Open another terminal (you need two of those, and the order is important)
• yarn start-ui on the first terminal to run live Webpack with hot-reload
• yarn start-server on the second terminal to start the backend
• Open your browser on http://localhost:3000

How to run for Production using Docker 🐳

Prerequisites

You must have docker and docker-compose installed on your system.

Run 🚀

• Copy docker-compose.yml.example to docker-compose.yml
• Run docker-compose up -d
• Voilà!

This will run a production-ready version of Retrospected automatically, using Postgres. You don't need to have anything installed other than Docker. This will install and run:

• Postgres
• pgAdmin4 (Web UI for postgres)
• The Retrospected Nodejs backend
• The frontend, served by nginx.

Backups 💾

When using the Docker deployment, your database runs from a container. But if you still need to make some backup of your data, you can do the following:

• Get the docker database image ID by doing: docker ps
• Run docker exec -t <docker_image_id> pg_dumpall -c -U postgres > dump_`date +%d-%m-%Y"_"%H_%M\_%S`.sql
• To restore your databases: cat dump_1234.sql | docker exec -i <docker_image_id> psql -U postgres

How to run the tests ✅

• Clone this repository
• yarn to install the dependencies (not npm i!)
• npm test to run the tests
• or yarn test-watch to run the tests every time you change a file

How to use Postgres (w/o Docker) 🗄

By default, the database engine is NeDB, an in-process database with no external dependencies (i.e. no database to install on your system).

If you want to use a more "production-ready" database such as Postgres (without Docker), copy .env.example to .env, change DB_TYPE to postgres and fill the rest.

Kubernetes ☸

To know more about Kubernetes, see the readme file in the k8s folder.

How to debug

Debugging the client

• Run both client and server normally (yarn start-server and yarn start-ui)
• From the browser window where the website is open, open the Chrome Dev tools
• Go on the Sources tab, and on the left, find your sources under webpack:// and then ..
• You can then put breakpoints in there and debugging

Roadmap and ideas 🚗 💡

• Adding a real (but optional) login mechanism (Google/GitHub etc.)
• Highlight posts where the user voted

Versions History

Version 2.2.1

• Adding Sentry support for the backend
• Making Google Analytics and Sentry configurable at run-time (as in Docker run-time)
• Adding Copy to clipboard compatibility for more browsers
• Preventing the app from crashing when cookies are disabled on Firefox
• Handling disconnections better by not reconnecting automatically and displaying a message instead.

Version 2.2.0

• Kubernetes configs. Deploy Retrospected to the cloud! ☁️ 🚀 ☸️
• Making the backend scalable by making SocketIO use Redis to communicate between instances. This is disabled by default and is only useful for Kubernetes deployments.
• The backend hostname is now configurable on the nginx config on the frontend.
• Replaced all occurences of withRouter by useHistory and useParams
• Added CI/CD support with Travis
• Auto-deployment of Docker images to Docker Hub
• Changing the UX related to Summary Mode
• Added the ability to copy the content of the session in the clipboard, both in Markdown format and Rich Text
• Added Error Boundaries to improve the user experience if the app crashes
• Added support for Sentry.io (error logging)
• Fixed an issue where multiline content was not displayed properly for anyone except the author
• Fixed an issue where a post couldn't be deleted if it had votes attached to it
• Issue 56 - Fixed an issue where new users who were not persisted yet couldn't vote (👏 Thanks @dkistner)

Version 2.1.4

• 🇩🇪 German Translation (👏 Thanks @PaulBrandt)
• Bugfix: First post was sometimes not saved on regular sessions

Version 2.1.3

• IE fix: the previous polyfill didn't quite work with IE9 to IE11.

Version 2.1.2

• Older browser support (IE11, somewhat works with IE10 and IE9).
• Adding an "outdated browser" warning
• Adding a remaining votes counter when using a maximum number of votes rule.
• Changing how Editable Labels work: they now only fire onChange on blur or Enter, minimizing the amount of traffic over the socket
• Removing the REACT_APP_DEBUG environment variable (using NODE_ENV instead).
• Adding a loading spinner while loading the game now that we can't predict which number of columns are going to appear on screen.
• Making sure index.html is not cached by Nginx on production
• Removing .map files on production

Version 2.1.1

• MS Windows support/fixes (👏 Thanks @srraf).
• PR-48 - Fixed a word-wrapping issue when we have only one (long) post (👏 Thanks @manicmaniac).
• Fixes a possible race-condition issue with "vote" syncing.

Version 2.1.0

• Adding full customisation of columns and rules:
  • You can now create a board with 1 to 5 columns
  • You can allow a user to vote for his own posts
  • You can allow multiple votes on the same post
  • You can limit the number of up and down votes
  • You can choose to display the name of the author, and the name of the persons who vote
• Your language selection is now remembered between sessions
• Various UI fixes:
  • Login modal improvements
  • Editable label improvements
• Various Docker improvements
• Upgraded dependencies
• 👏 Special thanks to @jesusabp, @zalexki and @jfritz for their inputs and ideas!

Version 2.0.4

• Upgraded dependencies
• Allows multi-line posts and comments (use the shift key to add a new line) (👏 Thanks @andyk314)
• Re-adding Hot Reload, which now works great with TypeScript and Create-React-App.

Version 2.0.3

• Upgraded dependencies
• Fixed an issue with Docker eating too much space with its unlimited log size. Log is now limited to 50mb.

Version 2.0.2

• Added an "Action" field on each Post: this allows the user to define a list of actions that need doing in the next sprint, and allows displaying this list in the Summary Mode.
• Bugfix: In certain conditions, some race-condition would store a post with a null session ID (so the post was lost forever).
• Bugfix: Disabled the Web Worker, as it's not working properly when loading a game directly (and not loading the homepage).

Version 2.0.1

• Adding support for Postgres migrations
• Adding created/updated fields on Post and Session
• Bugfix: Summary mode wasn't ordered by votes anymore. (👏 Thanks @cindyccook)

Version 2.0.0

• Complete rewrite
• TypeScript
• React Hooks
• @testing-library/react
• New component library (MaterialUI)
• Docker-friendly

Version 1.0.1

• 🇯🇵 Japanese Translation (👏 Thanks @sat0yu)
• Simplified the ESLint configuration
• Introducing Prettier (yarn format)
• Upgrading to Babel 7

Version 1.0.0

• React 16
• Webpack 4 (for previous versions of webpack, see below)
• Using @bionikspoon/react-toolbox instead of the original react-toolbox, as the project is no longer maintained and doesn't work with React 16.
• Upgraded all the other dependencies, everything should be up-to-date
• Improved the home screen

Version 0.10.0

• Webpack 3 (for Webpack 2, look at version 0.9.0)
• Converting entire project to 2-space indentation
• Upgrade other dependencies
• 🇵🇱 Polish Translation (👏 Thanks @olaf-cichocki)
• 🇦🇪 Arabic Translation (👏 Thanks @Meshredded)
• Improved the loading screen

Version 0.9.0

• Webpack 2 (for Webpack 1, look at version 0.8.1 and older)
• React 15.5 (which needs the new prop-types module, among other things)
• React Router 4 (completely different way of doing the routing)
• Move the structure of the project to a modular structure
• Upgraded all the other dependencies to the latest versions, except react-toolbox

Version 0.8.1

• Hotfix (ESLint errors on production build)

Version 0.8.0

• Using redux-saga-testing to test sagas
• 🇨🇳 Chinese (Traditional and Simplified) Translation (👏 Thanks @aqutw)
• Using Yarn
• Updating dependencies
• Fixing some Spanish translation mistakes (👏 Thanks @MrPolymath)
• Fixed a bug where the Vote buttons would allow a user to vote multiple times (on the UI only)

Version 0.7.0

• Good test coverage, using Jest
• 🇷🇺 Russian Translation (👏 Thanks @vectart)
• 🇪🇸 Spanish Translation (👏 Thanks @andresin87)
• Replacing PNG flags by SVG/CSS versions
• Using react-hot-loader 3.0.0 (beta2) for Hot reloading
• Fixing a few mobile/responsive issues

Version 0.6.1

• React-toolbox 1.0.0
• Debugging instructions

Version 0.6.0

• Added the ability to edit existing posts inline (posts you wrote)
• Adding a new Invite button to simplify and explain how to invite other people
• Removing the snackbar
• Removing ES7 decorators, as they are not standard yet
• Removing hash on CSS and JS on production (not necessary since we have the version number)

Version 0.5.2

• Fixed a bug on the anti-spam when if using a proxy (nginx for instance), the wrong ip was used
• Fixed a bug where the linting would fail if the default configuration was used (👏 Thanks @veselignome)

Version 0.5.1

• Full support of ESLint, based on AirBnB rules
• Adding an anti-spam for SocketIO, because someone is having fun crashing my server (thanks!)

Version 0.5.0

• Adding the possibility to join a previously joined session quickly (👏 Thanks @Sonaryr)
• Performance improvement on title edit (Also thanks to @Sonaryr 👏)
• New Logo!
• Added Favicons

Version 0.4.1

• Updated the screenshot on the readme
• package.json version updated properly this time

Version 0.4.0

• Improved the "Create Session" page, allows a user to create a session with a custom name
• Ability to edit that session name in real-time (by anyone)
• Added a "Summary Mode": this gives a summary of a current session, allowing a user to copy-paste the entire content easily
• New shorter session IDs
• New look-and-feel (new colours)
• Using reselect to create memoized selectors
• Improving performance by using shouldComponentUpdate via a custom base Component
• Updated to the brand new React 15
• Improving Windows support by allowing Windows users to use the same commands as *nix users
• 🇳🇱 Internationalisation: added Dutch to the list of supported languages (👏 Thanks @Sonaryr)

Version 0.3.0

• Adding support for more robust databases (NeDB, by default, in process, and MongoDB)
• Change to the Like / Unlike logic: a user can now only vote once, and not for his own posts
• Change to the Like / Unlike logic: like and unlikes counts are separated
• Adding ES7 decorators, more readable than the previous curry-ed functions
• Better support for Windows
• 🇧🇷 Internationalisation: added Brazilian Portuguese to the list of supported languages (👏 Thanks @renancouto)

Version 0.2.0

• Using redux-saga instead of redux-thunk
• Persistence: Simple persistence to disk (no database needed)
• Support for Google Analytics (with precise events monitoring)
• Ability to logout, and to leave a session
• Improve the reliability of the clients list (currently connected users)
• Fix issues when the web fonts can't load (firewall blocking for example)
• 🇬🇧 🇫🇷 🇭🇺 Internationalisation: support for English, French and Hungarian (👏 Thanks @iaretiga)

Version 0.1.1

• Minor visual tweaks
• Better console logs, server side
• Big clean up of un-used files and old libs

Version 0.1.0

• First production version
• Basic functionalities are there and working
• Login
• Creating a session
• Joining a session
• Adding new posts
• Like / Unlike posts
• Ability to delete our own posts
• List of connected users
• No persistence (yet)

Frequently Asked Questions

What if I want to name my session so I can remember easily how to come back to it?

You can actually change the session ID in the URL with anything you like: for example www.retrospected.com/game/hello_world

Try not to take a too common name though, to avoid anyone else finding your session by chance.

Thanks 👏

Many thanks to the following contributors who helped translating the app:

• Hungarian: @iaretiga
• Portuguese (Brazilian): @renancouto
• Dutch: @Sonaryr
• Russian: @vectart
• Spanish: @andresin87
• Chinese: @aqutw
• Polish: @olaf-cichocki
• Arabic: @Meshredded
• Japanese: @sat0yu
• German: @PaulBrandt

If you are a native speaker of another language, please don't hesitate to make a pull request to add a translation.

Special thanks to @andresin87 for pointing the flag-icon-css package to me, it replaces the PNG flags in a neater way.

Another special thanks to Browserstack, as they allow me to test this project is other browsers.

Please make your PRs from the develop branch, not master.