Developer Guide

This guide explains how to set up your environment for developing Hippo.

Hippo is a .NET webapp, built with the Model-View-Controller (MVC) approach.

The front-end uses the Bootstrap design framework, which (along with some other packages) is managed via npm and gulp.

System Requirements

Install the following development tools:

• .NET 5
• Node.js
• npm
• WAGI

Building

To build the project, run:

$ dotnet restore
$ cd Hippo
$ npm run build

Running

If you’re using the deislabs bindle test server, make sure to install the Let’s Encrypt TLS certificates on your machine.

$ sudo su
$ cd /usr/share/ca-certificates/
$ mkdir letsencrypt.org
$ cd $_
$ curl -o isrgrootx1.crt https://letsencrypt.org/certs/isrgrootx1.pem
$ curl -o lets-encrypt-r3.crt https://letsencrypt.org/certs/lets-encrypt-r3.pem
$ dpkg-reconfigure ca-certificates
$ update-ca-certificates

$ export BINDLE_URL=https://bindle.deislabs.io/v1
$ dotnet run

Then, open https://localhost:5001 to view the browser.

Testing

$ dotnet test

Migrations

We provide migrations for two databases: SQLite for local development, PostgreSQL for production use. If you change the model then you need to create migrations for both databases. To do this:

dotnet ef migrations add <name> --context SqliteDataContext --output-dir Migrations/Sqlite
ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT=Production dotnet ef migrations add <name> --context PostgresDataContext --output-dir Migrations/Postgres

Sometimes manual fix-ups are required:

• SQLite: EF generates "now()" for database-generated columns. This doesn’t exist. Change it to "datetime('now')" in both the migration and the designer.

Backing out

If you foul up your dev configuration beyond repair, or just want a clean start, delete Hippo/hippo.db.