Recto - Node.js Express-based web app server

Introduction

Recto is a web application server for use with the Library of Congress' BIBFRAME editor and its related profile editor. It offers authentication to the applications using Verso, the storage layer for the BIBFRAME editor and profile editor. Recto is configured to proxy Verso, so that Verso can serve as the authentication and authorization layer for applications hosted by Recto.

Recto serves as the reference implementation of the Library of Congress' BIBFRAME cataloging environment.

Getting started

Recto is a Node.js application designed to be built and run with npm.

Prerequisites

Verso

Recto relies on Verso to provide an authentication and authorization layer. To install Verso, see the Verso documentation.

Grunt

Required for building the profile editor submodule.

Installation

Recto includes both the BIBFRAME editor and the profile editor using git submodules. To install, create a directory for deployment, navigate to that directory, and then:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/lcnetdev/recto
cd recto
npm install

The bfe and profile editor submodules need to be built, as well:

cd bfe
npm install
grunt
cd ../profile-edit/source
npm install
grunt

The path to the profile editor may need to be updated in profile-edit/source/index.html:

<base href="/profile-edit/">

Similarly, the path to recto in bfe may need to be updated in the config files:

var rectoBase = "http://bibframe.org/bibliomata";

Finally, if using pm2 you can start recto with npm start, or for dev npm run dev

Configuration

Many defaults in Recto, the bfe, and the profile editor are set up for the Library of Congress' BIBFRAME pilot. You can configure Recto for your local installation by making the following changes:

In profile-edit/source/index.html, update the <base> tag to the base of your installation, e.g.:

<base href="/profile-edit/">

In bfe/static/js/config-dev.js, update the value of the rectoBase variable (on or around line 248) to match your local installation, e.g.:

rectoBase = "http://localhost:3000";

Recto is configured to proxy Verso to allow cookies to be shared between environments. You can set the address of your Verso proxy with the environment variable VERSO_PROXY, e.g.:

VERSO_PROXY=http://localhost:3001 npm start

For convenience, an npm script is included to run Recto locally for development:

npm run local

Running Recto

Recto can run as an npm application with the usual npm start invocation. In addition, as noted above, a development server can be run with the command npm run local.

For a more production-ready deployment, you can use the PM2 Process Manager to manage your Recto process. To use pm2 to deploy Recto:

npm install pm2 -g
pm2 start server.js --name recto

To check the status of pm2 applications:

pm2 status

You should get a status screen (with a short uptime).

To save your pm2 runtime configuration:

pm2 save

This will save a copy of the PM2 config in ~/.pm2/dump.pm2.

To restart the cluster with the dump file:

pm2 resurrect

Recto runs by default on port 3000.

greeve / recto