Application development

By following these steps, you will have your own data modelling app up and running on your local machine.

Prerequisite

• Node (> 16+)
• Docker (> 20+)
• Docker-compose (> 2.11+)
• Python (> 3.8)
• dm-cli

Create a new app

To initialize an app, you can use the create-dm-app tool.

Create an app by running (change my-app to your application name):

npx @development-framework/create-dm-app my-app

This will create a new folder my-app and inside that folder, the initial application structure is generated and the transitive dependencies are installed.

The application is made in React and you can connect it with any Data Modelling Storage Service (DMSS) instance you want.

Starting services

To run dependent services locally you can use the included docker-compose.yaml file. This file includes databases, DMSS service, and job service.

Start services in the background (-d detached mode) by running:

docker-compose pull
docker compose up

Reset data

Install the dm-cli package (available on PyPi) by running:

pip install -r requirements.txt 

Run this command to reset the application data (upload any entities, blueprints, and recipes registered under the app/ folder) to the data modelling storage service (DMSS):

./reset-app.sh

note

This script must be run every time a modification is done in any files in the app/ folder.

Tip: Use virtual Python environment

We recommend create a virtual Python environment.

Create a new virtual environment by running:

python3 -m venv .venv

Activate the virtual environment by running:

Linux

$ source .venv/bin/activate

Windows

$ .\venv\Scripts\Activate.ps1
$ pip install --upgrade pip

Starting web application

To start the app development server, run:

npm start

The web app can now be reached at http://localhost:3000 in the web browser. The web page will automatically reload if you make changes to the code. You will see the build errors and lint warnings in the console.

note

Remember: You must have the docker-compose services running to use the web application.

Build production version

When you’re ready to deploy to production, create a minified bundle by running the command:

npm run build

Configure the app

This template uses an application entity to control the behavior of the app. This entity can be seen at app/data/DemoDS/DemoApplication/entities/demoApplication.json. The .env-file has a variable pointing to this application entity, which will be loaded and used to select what UIPlugin to be shown. The application RecipeLink that defines what to show is located at app/data/DemoDS/DemoApplication/recipes/demoApp.json.

URLs to services are controlled by environment variables in the .env.local file, by default this will point to the services specified in the docker-compose.yaml file. The .env.local file also controls authentication, and it's possible to enable or disable authentication. See configuration for overview of the different configuration options available.

Extending the app

DM Apps is designed to be extensible, and customizable.
This is achived via plugins and recipes.

Read more about those concepts here;

• plugins
• recipes

See plugin development for creating and adding new plugins.

Domain modelling

Models are defined using blueprints.

See domain modeling for how to create and add models for the app.

Pre-commit

To ensure consistent code formatting and to do a minimum of checks on the local computer before committing code to a Git repository, the app provides a .pre-commit-config.yaml file that is used to setup Git pre-commit hooks. The pre-commit hook will run formatting, certain tests, sanitisers, and analyze the code for quality and best practises. To run pre-commit, it needs to be installed on your local machine with

# Install pre-commit
pip install pre-commit
# Register pre-commit hook
pre-commit install
# Run pre-commit manually on all files
pre-commit run -a
# Commit witouth running checks
git commit --no-verify