From opening a bug report to creating a pull request: every contribution is appreciated and welcome. If you're planning to implement a new feature or change the api please create an issue first. This way we can ensure that your precious work is not in vain.
### Not Sure Where to Start?
Budibase is a low-code web application builder that creates svelte based web applications.
Budibase is a monorepo managed by [lerna](https://github.com/lerna/lerna). Lerna manages the building and publishing of the budibase packages. At a high level, here are the packages that make up budibase.
- **packages/builder** - contains code for the budibase builder client side svelte application.
- **packages/client** - A module that runs in the browser responsible for reading JSON definition and creating living, breathing web apps from it.
- **packages/server** - The budibase server. This [Koa](https://koajs.com/) app is responsible for serving the JS for the builder and budibase apps, as well as providing the API for interaction with the database and file system.
## Glossary of Terms
To understand the budibase API, it can be helpful to understand the top level entities that make up Budibase.
### Client
A client represents a single budibase customer. Each budibase client will have 1 or more budibase servers. Every client is assigned a unique ID.
A client can have one or more budibase applications. Budibase applications would be things like "Developer Inventory Management" or "Goat Herder CRM". Think of a budibase application as a tree.
An App can have one or more databases. Keeping with our [dendrology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendrology) analogy - think of an database as a branch on the tree. Databases are used to keep data separate for different instances of your app. For example, if you had a CRM app, you may create a database for your US office, and a database for your Australian office. Databases allow us to support [multitenancy](https://www.gartner.com/en/information-technology/glossary/multitenancy) in budibase applications.
Tables in budibase are almost akin to tables in relational databases. A table may be a "Car" or an "Employee". They are the main building blocks for the creation and management of backend data in budibase.
A View is an advanced feature in budibase that allows you to write a custom query using [MapReduce](https://pouchdb.com/guides/queries.html) queries. Views enable powerful query functionality and calculations, allowing you to do more with your data.
### Page
A page in budibase is actually a single, self contained svelte web app. There are only 2 pages in budibase. The **login** page and the **main** page.
### Screen
A screen is a component within a single page. Generally, screens represent client side routes, and can be switched without refreshing the page.
### Component
A component is the basic frontend building block of a budibase app.
### Component Library
Component libraries are collections of components as well as the definition of their props contained in a file called `components.json`.
## Contributing to Budibase
* Please maintain the existing code style.
* Please try to keep your commits small and focused.
* Please write tests.
* If the project diverges from your branch, please rebase instead of merging. This makes the commit graph easier to read.
* Once your work is completed, please raise a PR against the main branch with some information about what has changed and why.
This will create a new budibase application in the `~/.budibase/<your-app-uuid>` directory, and NPM install the component libraries for that application. Let's start building your app with the budibase builder!
### 4. Running
To run the budibase server and builder in dev mode (i.e. with live reloading):
1. Open a new console
2.`yarn dev` (from root)
3. Access the builder on http://localhost:4001/_builder/
This will enable watch mode for both the builder app, server, client library and any component libraries.
## Data Storage
When you are running locally, budibase stores data on disk using [PouchDB](https://pouchdb.com/), as well as some JSON on local files. After setting up budibase, you can find all of this data in the `~/.budibase` directory.
A client can have one or more budibase applications. Budibase applications are stored in `~/.budibase/<app-uuid>`. Files used by your budibase application when running are stored in the `public` directory. Everything else is dev files used for the development of your apps in the builder.
#### Frontend
To see the current individual JSON definitions for your pages and screens used by the builder, have a look at `~/.budibase/<app-uuid>/pages`.
For your actual running application (not in dev), the frontend tree structure of the application (known as `clientFrontendDefinition`) is stored as JSON on disk. This is what the budibase client library reads to create your app at runtime. This can be found at `~/.budibase/<app-uuid>/public/clientFrontendDefinition.js`
The backend schema, tables and rows are stored using PouchDB when developing locally, and in [CouchDB](https://pouchdb.com/) when running in production.
At budibase, we pride ourselves on giving our users a fast, native and slick local development experience. As a result, we use the electron to provide a native GUI for the budibase builder. In order to release budibase out into the wild, you should test your changes in a packaged electron application. To do this, first build budibase from the root directory.
```
yarn build
```
Now everything is built, you can package up your electron application.
```
cd packages/server
yarn build:electron
```
Your new electron application will be stored in `packages/server/dist/<operating-system>`. Open up the executable and make sure everything is working smoothly.
#### Publishing to NPM
Once you are happy that your changes work in electron, you can publish all the latest versions of the monorepo packages by running:
After NPM has successfully published the budibase packages, a new tag will be pushed to master. This will kick off a github action (can be found at `.github/workflows/release.yml`) this will build and package the electron application for every OS (Windows, Mac, Linux). The binaries will be stored under the new tag on the [budibase releases page](https://github.com/Budibase/budibase/releases).
Sometimes, things go wrong. This can be due to incompatible updates on the budibase platform. To clear down your development environment and start again:
