GOV.UK Forms Product Pages consist of the main product page content used for onboarding new users of GOV.UK Forms, and its supporting pages (for example, the accessibility statement and privacy policy). It is implemented as a Rails app.
To run the project, you will need to install:
- Ruby - we use version 3 of Ruby. Before running the project, double check the .ruby-version file to see the exact version.
- Node.js - the frontend build requires Node.js. We use Node 20 LTS versions.
We recommend using a version manager to install and manage these, such as:
# 1. Clone the git repository and change directory to the new folder
git clone [email protected]:alphagov/forms-product-page.git
cd forms-product-page
# 2. Run the setup script
./bin/setupYou can either run the development task:
# Run the foreman dev server. This will also start the frontend dev task
./bin/devor run the rails server:
# Run a local Rails server
./bin/rails server
# When running the server, you can use any of the frontend tasks, e.g.:
npm run devThe app tests are written with rspec-rails and you can run them with:
bundle exec rspecThere are also unit tests for JavaScript code (look for files named *.test.js), written with Vitest. You can run those with:
npm run testWe use RuboCop GOV.UK for linting Ruby code. To autocorrect issues, run:
bundle exec rubocop -AWe use JavaScript Standard Style for our JavaScript code:
npm run lintOn GitHub pull requests, we also check our dependencies for security issues using [bundler-audit]. You can run this locally with:
bundle auditWe have a Rakefile that is set up to follow the GOV.UK conventions for Rails applications.
To lint your changes and run tests with one command, you can run:
bundle exec rakeRefer to the the config gem to understand the file based settings loading order.
To override file based settings through Machine based env variables settings, you can run:
cat config/settings.yml
file
based
settings
env1: 'foo'export SETTINGS__FILE__BASED__SETTINGS__ENV1="bar"puts Settings.file.based.setting.env1
barRefer to the settings file for all the settings required to run this app
We use Sentry to catch and alert us about exceptions in production apps.
We currently have a very basic setup for Sentry in this repo for testing, which we will continue to build upon.
In order to use Sentry locally, you will need to:
- Sign in to Sentry using your work Google account.
- Create a new project.
- Add the Sentry DSN to your environment as
SETTINGS__SENTRY__DSN, or add it to a local config file:
# config/settings.local.yml
sentry:
DSN: <DSN from Sentry>
If you want to deliberately raise an exception to test, uncomment out the triggers in the Sentry initializer script. Whenever you run the app, errors will be raised and should also come through on Sentry.
The forms-product-page app is containerised (see Dockerfile) and can be deployed in the same way you'd normally deploy a containerised app.
We host our apps using Amazon Web Services (AWS). You can read about how deployments happen on our team wiki, if you have access.
- You should configure HTTP access logs in the application config, using Lograge.
- You should use the LogEventService and EventLogger to create any custom log messages. This is independent of any Lograge configuration.
- The output format is JSON, using the JsonLogFormatter to enable simpler searching and visbility, especially in Splunk.
- Do not use log_tags, as it breaks the JSON formatting produced by Lograge.
To update the version of Alpine Linux and Ruby used in the Dockerfile, use the update_app_versions.sh script in forms-deploy
Raise a GitHub issue if you need support.
We welcome contributions - please read CONTRIBUTING.md and the alphagov Code of Conduct before contributing.
We use the MIT License.