Using a Sails Hook to customise ReDBox

Using a Sails hook to customise ReDBox

To allow us to make customisations to a ReDBox instance, we take advantage of the sails installable hook feature. This allows us to package our changes as an NPM package and using npm install, have them applied to the instance during the lifting process.

Development

A code project is setup in Bitbucket that contains the hook code. This should be of the format redbox-hook-[project name], where [project-name] is replaced with the project, feature, or client name.

Each hook contains a docker-compose.yml intended for development. It loads the customised container (i.e. with hook installed) and volume mounts the local code so that you can make changes.

For example:

services:
  rbportal:
    image: qcifengineering/redbox-portal:develop
    volumes:
      - "../../:/opt/redbox-portal/node_modules/redbox-hook-[project-name]"

To run the app use the runForDev.sh script or docker-compose -f support/development/docker-compose.yml up.

Form Configuration changes

Form configuration changes are kept in the form-config directory. Files are loaded using require and merged using lodash merge to update the form configuration.

Sails Configuration Changes

Sails configuration changes are kept in the config directory. Files are loaded using require and merged using lodash merge to update the form configuration.

Asset and View Changes

Assets and Views are kept in the assets and views directories. These files are copied into /opt/redbox-portal/assets and /opt/redbox-portal/views respectively as part of the startup.