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Local Development

Implementation Details

Some basic concepts to get you familiar with how things are organized:

The UI for Feoblog is written using TypeScript inside of Svelte components, so familiarity with these technologies is useful.

The server-side is implemented using ActixWeb and Askama templates.

Initial Setup

Install these dependencies:

Run npm install inside the web-client/ subdirectory to install the Javascript.

Run cargo build in the project root to build the web server portion.

Run cargo run db init to initialize an empty database for development.

Development Workflow

I find that much of the work I do is based in the TypeScript/Svelte-based user interface (inside the web-client/ subdirectory). When running in development mode, FeoBlog is configured to pass through access to those JavaScript files to the underlying file system. (vs. accessing static files that are bundled into the binary when built in release mode.) This means that you don't have to rebuild and relaunch the Rust-based web server every time you modify those files.

To run in this mode, I recommend starting two terminal windows.

  1. In the first window, in the root of the project, start the web server:

    cargo run serve --open

  2. In the second window, in the web-client/ subdirectory, run:

    npm run watch

    This will start a process that will compile the Svelte/TypeScript code, and continually watch for changes and update the output as necessary.

Unfortunately, the Svelte compiler doesn't always pick up every change, so depending on changes you make, you may need to stop the npm run watch process and restart it. (This process can also periodically die, so if your changes aren't showing up, check to make sure it's still running!)

Local Testing With SSL

Feoblog itself does not currently support serving encrypted HTTP connections. However, some functionality may require an SSL connection to work. In particular, browser implementations of the MediaStream API may require an SSL connection. (Though Chrome and Firefox seem to allow access to 127.0.0.1 without it.) If you need to, you can run an SSL proxy like this:

# Start feoblog on a public IP address:
# (allows testing from other computers. Say, Safari on your iPhone)
cargo run serve --bind 192.168.1.101:8080

# Proxy to that port:
web-client/node_modules/.bin/local-ssl-proxy --hostname 192.168.1.101 --source 8081 --target 8080

This is not a great way to serve your production site, but it'll work easily enough for development. Of course, it's using a self-signed certificate, so you'll need to accept that when you first connect via SSL.

Building a Release

To build a "release"/self-contained version of Feoblog:

  • Build the web client.
    In web-client/, run:

    npm run build

  • Make a release build.
    In the root directory, run:

    cargo build --release
    • or, alternatively: cargo install --path . --locked

Note, this currently does not work on Windows. See: #16

This process is also automated as github actions: https://github.com/NfNitLoop/feoblog/blob/develop/.github/workflows/build.yml