From opening a bug report to creating a pull request: every contribution is appreciated and welcome. If you're planning to implement a new feature or change the api please create an issue first. This way we can ensure that your precious work is not in vain.
Budibase is a low-code web application builder that creates svelte based web applications.
Budibase is a monorepo managed by lerna. Lerna manages the building and publishing of the budibase packages. At a high level, here are the packages that make up budibase.
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packages/builder - contains code for the budibase builder client side svelte application.
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packages/client - A module that runs in the browser responsible for reading JSON definition and creating living, breathing web apps from it.
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packages/cli - The budibase CLI. This is the main module that gets downloaded from NPM and is responsible for creating and managing apps, as well as running the budibase server.
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packages/server - The budibase server. This Koa app is responsible for serving the JS for the builder and budibase apps, as well as providing the API for interaction with the database and file system.
To understand the budibase API, it can be helpful to understand the top level entities that make up Budibase.
A client represents a single budibase customer. Each budibase client will have 1 or more budibase servers. Every client is assigned a unique ID.
A client can have one or more budibase applications. Budibase applications would be things like "Developer Inventory Management" or "Goat Herder CRM". Think of a budibase application as a tree.
An App can have one or more databases. Keeping with our dendrology analogy - think of an database as a branch on the tree. Databases are used to keep data separate for different instances of your app. For example, if you had a CRM app, you may create a database for your US office, and a database for your Australian office. Databases allow us to support multitenancy in budibase applications.
Tables in budibase are almost akin to tables in relational databases. A table may be a "Car" or an "Employee". They are the main building blocks for the creation and management of backend data in budibase.
A View is an advanced feature in budibase that allows you to write a custom query using MapReduce queries. Views enable powerful query functionality and calculations, allowing you to do more with your data.
A page in budibase is actually a single, self contained svelte web app. There are only 2 pages in budibase. The login page and the main page.
A screen is a component within a single page. Generally, screens represent client side routes, and can be switched without refreshing the page.
A component is the basic frontend building block of a budibase app.
Component libraries are collections of components as well as the definition of their props contained in a file called components.json.
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Please maintain the existing code style.
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Please try to keep your commits small and focused.
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Please write tests.
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If the project diverges from your branch, please rebase instead of merging. This makes the commit graph easier to read.
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Once your work is completed, please raise a PR against the main branch with some information about what has changed and why.
yarn - npm install -g yarn
jest - npm install -g jest
git clone https://github.com/Budibase/budibase.git
then cd into your local copy.
yarn to install project dependencies
yarn bootstrap will install all budibase modules and symlink them together using lerna.
yarn build will build all budibase packages.
yarn initialise will initialise your budibase installation. A Budibase apps folder will have been created in ~/.budibase.
This is a blank apps folder, so you will need to create yourself an app.
cd packages/server
yarn run budi new your-app-name
This will create a new budibase application in the ~/.budibase/<your-app-uuid> directory, and NPM install the component libraries for that application. Let's start building your app with the budibase builder!
To run the budibase server and builder in dev mode (i.e. with live reloading):
- Open a new console
yarn dev(from root)- Access the builder on http://localhost:4001/_builder/
This will enable watch mode for both the builder app, server, client library and any component libraries.
Notice that when inside packages/server, you can use any Budibase CLI command via yarn:
e.g. yarn budi new mikes_app == budi new mikes_app
This will use the CLI directly from packages/cli, rather than your globally installed budi
When you are running locally, budibase stores data on disk using PouchDB, as well as some JSON on local files. After setting up budibase, you can find all of this data in the ~/.budibase directory.
A client can have one or more budibase applications. Budibase applications are stored in ~/.budibase/<app-uuid>. Files used by your budibase application when running are stored in the public directory. Everything else is dev files used for the development of your apps in the builder.
To see the current individual JSON definitions for your pages and screens used by the builder, have a look at ~/.budibase/<app-uuid>/pages.
For your actual running application (not in dev), the frontend tree structure of the application (known as clientFrontendDefinition) is stored as JSON on disk. This is what the budibase client library reads to create your app at runtime. This can be found at ~/.budibase/<app-uuid>/public/clientFrontendDefinition.js
The HTML and CSS for your apps runtime pages, as well as the budibase client library JS is stored at:
~/.budibase/<app-uuid>/public/main~/.budibase/<app-uuid>/public/unauthenticated
The backend schema, models and records are stored using PouchDB when developing locally, and in CouchDB when running in production.
At budibase, we pride ourselves on giving our users a fast, native and slick local development experience. As a result, we use the electron to provide a native GUI for the budibase builder. In order to release budibase out into the wild, you should test your changes in a packaged electron application. To do this, first build budibase from the root directory.
yarn build
Now everything is built, you can package up your electron application.
cd packages/server
yarn build:electron
Your new electron application will be stored in packages/server/dist/<operating-system>. Open up the executable and make sure everything is working smoothly.
Once you are happy that your changes work in electron, you can publish all the latest versions of the monorepo packages by running:
yarn publishnpm
from your root directory.
After NPM has successfully published the budibase packages, a new tag will be pushed to master. This will kick off a github action (can be found at .github/workflows/release.yml) this will build and package the electron application for every OS (Windows, Mac, Linux). The binaries will be stored under the new tag on the budibase releases page.
Sometimes, things go wrong. This can be due to incompatible updates on the budibase platform. To clear down your development environment and start again:
rm -rf ~/.budibase
Follow from Step 3. Install and Build in the setup guide above. You should have a fresh Budibase installation.
Budibase uses Cypress to run a number of E2E tests. To run the tests execute the following command in the root folder:
yarn test:e2e
Or if you are in the builder you can run yarn cy:test.
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The contributors are listed in AUTHORS.md (add yourself).
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This project uses a modified version of the MPLv2 license, see LICENSE.
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We use the C4 (Collective Code Construction Contract) process for contributions. Please read this if you are unfamiliar with it.