server

README

Server

The directory contains the backend server server's code and configuration.

Usage

Follow the Getting Started instructions to run the backend.

# This starts up a local Postgres server.
bazel run //scripts:run_db

# Then, in another terminal, start the backend server
# This script builds and runs the backend server using the flags in `configs/local.conf`
bazel run //scripts:run_backend

# If you want to test the end to end experinece, also start up the frontend to
# see the project running locally on http://localhost:3000
cd frontend; npm run frontend

You should see some Bazel output followed by a big 'Silicon Starter' logo in ASCII art. Once this shows up, the server is running. You'll see any logs or errors generated by the server in that console.

Understanding the Backend Server

All the Backend Server does is expose three endpoints over HTTP.

• POST /api/sessionLogin - A login handler to allow users to get cookies in exchange for credentials, and handle the creation of new users in your system.
• POST /api/sessionLogout - A logout handler to clear cookies and revoke session tokens.
• GET/POST /api/graphql - A GraphQL API endpoint to allow users to call your GraphQL resolvers behind authorization.
  • GraphQL is a way of defining a set of query and mutation methods that will auto generate typings for both your frontend and backend, ensuring type + method safety between the two servers. The best way to see this in practice is to see how the contents of schema.graphqls correspond to the methods in tasks.go and users.go (their backend implementation), and see how the methods are called on the frontend by searching for eacn method name.

That's it! When you want to add additional functionality, it will typically be through adding a GQL query or mutation method.

If you do need to add additional HTTP handlers (for things like async tasks), you can add them in main.go.

Updating GraphQL Schema

The GraphQL schema is managed in graph/schema.graphqls. Any time you change it, Bazel will rebuild the generated code automatically. To view the generated code, run:

bazel build //cmd/server:gql

which will produce some output like:

INFO: Analyzed target //cmd/server:gql (0 packages loaded, 0 targets configured).
INFO: Found 1 target...
Target //cmd/server:gql up-to-date:
  bazel-bin/cmd/server/generated/generated.go
  bazel-bin/cmd/server/model/models_gen.go
INFO: Elapsed time: 0.167s, Critical Path: 0.00s
INFO: 1 process: 1 internal.
INFO: Build completed successfully, 1 total action

You can view the model code (the backend type bindings) by viewing bazel-bin/cmd/server/model/models_gen.go and you can view the generated 'glue' code by viewing bazel-bin/cmd/server/generated/generated.go.

The frontend code isn't (currently) automatically regenerated, it lives in frontend/graphql/generated/, and is updated with cd frontend && npm run graphql-gen