Full Stack Development

Local Development

We use Docker and Docker Compose V2 to run the app locally using containers. To build and run the full app with a snapshot of the dev database:

yarn compose up --build

or

yarn dev:up

Firebase emulators run functions code and a local Firestore instance, seeded with a snapshot of the development environment
A Typesense container runs local search
A Next.js container builds and serves the frontend with hot-reload
A Typescript container watches the functions directory and rebuilds on save

Purpose: Runs the Firebase emulators for Functions, Firestore, Auth, and Storage.
Details:
- Executes your Cloud Functions code locally.
- Provides a local Firestore instance, seeded with a snapshot of the development database for testing.
- Shares the project directory with other containers for live code updates.
- Health check ensures the emulators are ready before dependent services start.

Purpose: Runs a local Typesense search engine.
Details:
- Provides full-text search capabilities for bills, hearings, and testimonies.
- Use the API key test-api-key for local access.
- Data is persisted in a Docker volume so your search collections survive container restarts.
- Health check ensures Typesense is available before dependent services start.

Purpose: Builds and serves the Next.js frontend with hot-reload.
Details:
- Watches for code changes and instantly reloads the frontend.
- Connects to the local Firebase emulators and Typesense container

Purpose: Watches the /functions directory and rebuilds Cloud Functions automatically on save.
Details:
- Ensures your local Cloud Functions code is always up-to-date without manual rebuilds.

Purpose: One-time run that populates Typesense collections for bills, hearings, and testimonies.
Details:
- Runs the backfill script (yarn dev:backfill) after both Firebase and Typesense are healthy.
  - This calls pub/sub function checkSearchIndexVersion, which will compare the schema on the dev/local environment, based on env variables and update them if necessary
- Reads from the local Firestore emulator and writes to the local Typesense instance.
- Ensures your search collections are populated with realistic data for development and testing.

yarn typesense-admin -e local console starts a node console with a client global for the local environment.
yarn firebase-admin -e local console starts a node console with firebase, db, auth, admin, and api (MA Legislature API) globals for the local environment.