Messenger

A one-to-one realtime chat app.

Initial Setup

Note: these setup steps are not necessary when running the code on GitPod. They are only necessary when running the project on your local machine.

Create the PostgreSQL database (these instructions may need to be adapted for your operating system):

psql
CREATE DATABASE messenger;
\q

Create a .env file in the server directory and add the following variables (make any modifications to fit your local installation):

SECRET_KEY="YourSecretKey"
ENV="development"
POSTGRES_ENGINE="django.db.backends.postgresql_psycopg2"
POSTGRES_HOST="localhost"
POSTGRES_PORT=5432
POSTGRES_DATABASE="messenger"
POSTGRES_USER="user"
POSTGRES_PASSWORD="password"

In the server folder, install dependencies and then seed the database (you may want to use a virtual environment):

Note: if you're running python 3.10, you might run into an issue with the Greenlet dependency. We recommend downgrading to python 3.8 or 3.9 for this project.

cd server
pip install -r requirements.txt


python manage.py makemigrations
python manage.py migrate 

python manage.py shell
from messenger_backend.seed import seed
seed()
exit()

In the client folder, install dependencies:

cd client
npm install

Running the Application Locally

In one terminal, start the front end:

cd client
npm start

In a separate terminal, start the back end:

cd server
python manage.py runserver

Running Tests on the Server

cd server
python manage.py test

How to Run E2E Tests

Seed the database.
Start the backend server.
Start the frontend server with npm start in client directory.
Open Cypress dashboard with npx cypress open in client directory.
Click on the test suite to run (e.g. auth.spec.js).

Notes

You need to seed the database before each run. Because E2E test cases writes data to the actual database, re-seeding is necessary to assure consistent test results.
The E2E tests are not comprehensive. There is a test for the authentication pages that should pass with the starting code, and some tests for some of the functionality for some of the tickets you will be assigned.
When you push your changes to GitHub, E2E tests are automatically executed on GitHub Actions. You can find test results under Pull request > Checks > test > Cypress (see screenshots below).

usamaidrsk / 7e1883