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Research Catalog README

This is the new NYPL Research Catalog front end built in Next.js.

Local Environment Setup

Getting Started

  1. Install the required packages
npm install
  1. Ensure the required Environment Variables are set in your .env.local file. (see https://github.com/NYPL/research-catalog/blob/main/ENVIRONMENTVARS.md)

Running the app locally with npm:

npm run dev

Local Hosting

In order to successfully log in under a local deployment you'll need to update your machine's etc/hosts file. This file maps IP addresses to hostnames.

This is necessary because NYPL's authentication system works by reading cookies and parsing the patron's encrypted credentials. These cookies only work on .nypl.org domains, so we need to map our local deployment to a .nypl.org domain.

Add the following line to your etc/hosts file. There is no need to remove or update any other configuration in this file.

127.0.0.1       local.nypl.org

Running the app locally with Docker (optional):

Docker is a platform that allows reproducible development environments to be created and run across different local and production/test environments.

Running the app locally via Docker is optional for now, and provided as an alternative to npm run dev.

Steps to run Docker container locally:

  1. Download and install Docker.
  2. cd into research-catalog repo
  3. Run docker-compose up --build --force-recreate
  4. Check that app is being served at http://localhost:8080/research/research-catalog

Client and Server-Side Data Fetching

Page components on the Research Catalog make use of Next's getServerSideProps function to fetch data on the server at request time, populating the component's props before the initial page load.

When getServerSideProps is used to fetch the initial data, Next automatically handles client-side data re-hydration on route changes without reloading the page. This eliminates the need for manual client-side data fetching/re-hydration in most cases.

For instances where manual client-side data fetching is preferable (e.g. when we don't want data fetching to block the initial page load), we employ the SWR module. SWR provides hooks that handles the typical boilerplate for fetching data and setting loading and error states, as well as optimizations such as caching.

Logging

This project uses Winston for serverside logging. See logger.js for the formatting and storage of logs. We structure our logs according to these NYPL standards.

Logs for this project's qa and production branches can be found in AWS Cloudwatch under the nypl-digital-dev account by searching "research-catalog". For the old DFE logs, search "discoveryui".

For Vercel deployments, logging will appear in the console.

My Account API Endpoints

See the My Account README.