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spotlight

CI | Gem Version | Release Notes | Design Documents

Spotlight is open source software that enables librarians, curators, and other content experts to easily build feature-rich websites that showcase collections and objects from a digital repository, uploaded items, or a combination of the two. Spotlight is a plug-in for Blacklight, an open source, Ruby on Rails Engine that provides a basic discovery interface for searching an Apache Solr index.

Read more about what Spotlight is, our motivations for creating it, and how to install and configure it in the wiki pages. You might also want to take a look at our demo videos, especially the tour of a completed Spotlight exhibit and the walkthrough of building an exhibit with Spotlight.

Requirements

  1. Ruby 3.1+
  2. Ruby on Rails 7.x
  3. Java (11 or greater) for Solr
  4. ImageMagick (http://www.imagemagick.org/script/index.php) due to carrierwave

Installation

To bootstrap a new Rails application using importmap-rails:

$ SKIP_TRANSLATION=1 rails new app-name -m https://raw.githubusercontent.com/projectblacklight/spotlight/main/template.rb -a propshaft -j importmap

or using jsbundling-rails with esbuild:

$ SKIP_TRANSLATION=1 rails new app-name -m https://raw.githubusercontent.com/projectblacklight/spotlight/main/template.rb -a propshaft -j esbuild

or from an existing Rails application:

$ SKIP_TRANSLATION=1 rails app:template LOCATION=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/projectblacklight/spotlight/main/template.rb

During this process you will be prompted to enter an initial administrator email and password (this is a super-admin that can administer any exhibit in the installation). If you choose not to create one, the first user will be given administrative privileges.

Change directories to your new application:

$ cd app-name

Run the database migrations:

$ SKIP_TRANSLATION=1 rake db:migrate

Start Solr (possibly using solr_wrapper in development or testing):

$ solr_wrapper

and the Rails development server:

$ bin/dev

Go to http://localhost:3000 in your browser.

Configuration

Default ActionMailer configuration

Spotlight introduces functionality that depends on being able to send emails to exhibit curators and contacts. Be sure to configure your application's environments appropriately (see the Rails Guide for Action Mailer Configuration).

See the Spotlight wiki for more detailed information on configuring Spotlight.

Developing Spotlight

Branches

  • The main branch is for development of the upcoming 5.0 release.
  • The 4.x series is on the release-4.x branch for backports of features and bug fixes.

Spotlight

  • is a Rails engine and needs to be used in the context of a Rails application. We use engine_cart to create an internal test application at .internal_test_app/
  • uses Solr as part of its integration tests. We use solr_wrapper to manage the Solr instance used for development and test.

See more detailed instructions for development environment setup at "Contributing to Spotlight"

Run a development server

With EngineCart

$ rake spotlight:server

Then visit http://localhost:3000. A Solr instance will be running on port 8983. When using importmap (the default configuration), JavaScript changes in development should not require bundling or a server restart.

With Docker

# because of how docker compose handles named images, running `docker compose up --build` will error when the Rails images have not been built locally
docker compose build
docker compose up

Tests

Run all the tests:

$ rake

This utilizes Solr and the testing rails app automatically.

Translations

Spotlight ships with i18n-tasks to help manage translations. To run a translation health check:

$ bundle exec i18n-tasks health

See developer-facing instructions for enabling translation on the wiki.

Community

  • Join us on the code4lib Slack
    • #spotlight-development - a developer-focused channel for Spotlight
    • #blacklight - a developer-focused channel for discussing implementation, customization, and other software concerns in the larger Blacklight community
    • #spotlight-service - a service-focused channel for people who support exhibit-builders at institutions already using Spotlight
  • Google Groups

Updating the JavaScript bundle

The JavaScript is built by npm from sources in app/javascript into a bundle in app/assets/javascripts/spotlight/spotlight.js. This file should not be edited by hand as any changes would be overwritten. When any of the JavaScript components in the gem are changed, this bundle should be rebuilt with the following steps:

  1. Install npm
  2. Run npm install to download dependencies
  3. Run npm run prepare to build the bundle
  4. If you are releasing a new version of the gem, follow the release instructions below.

Releasing a new version and publishing the JavaScript

You only need to update package.json and prepare/publish the JavaScript package for npm if there are changes to the JavaScript.

  1. Edit version.rb and package.json to set the new version
  2. Run npm run prepare to build the JavaScript bundle
  3. Run npm i --package-lock-only to update the version in package-lock.json
  4. Commit the changes e.g. git commit -am "Bump version to X.X.X"
  5. Push the release to rubygems and GitHub: bundle exec rake release
  6. Run npm publish to push the JavaScript package to https://npmjs.org/package/spotlight-frontend

See Updating the JavaScript bundle above for more details.