GeoGirafe

GeoGirafe is a flexible application to build online geoportals. This repository contains the web-viewer part of the project.

Please note that GeoGirafe is at its very beginning, can strongly evolve and is therefore not intended for the moment to be used by people other than developers or contributors.

The project documentation can be found here: https://doc.geomapfish.dev.
The demo instances of GeoGirafe can be tested here: https://demo.geomapfish.dev.

Goal

The goal of GeoGirafe is to allow the easy implementation of a stable, efficient and secure geoportal. GeoGirafe is also meant to be easily extensible, by allowing users to integrate their own plugins.

As the main users of GeoGirafe do not necessarily have advanced skills in computer development, we wanted to have a learning curve as smooth as possible. This is why the project does not use the latest frameworks and favours readable code over code corresponding to certain arbitrary "quality" criteria. GeoGirafe is therefore based on web standards (Vanilla Web Components) and limits the number of dependencies to other libraries.

Development philosophy

GeoGirafe is developed according to the following principles:

• KISS: GeoGirafe is simple. It is developed with pure Vanilla-JavaScript. No complex framework like React or Angular is used. If you know JavaScript, you can understand how it works.

• DevSecOps: GeoGirafe is baking security in at every phase of the software lifecycle, in order to deliver a secure-by-design application. Quality, readability, reliability and security are checked by the SonarCloud platform during our continuous integration processes: View SonarCloud Reports

• Reactivity: GeoGirafe is meant to be responsive, resilient, elastic and message driven according to the Reactive Manifesto.

• Agility: GeoGirafe is being developed according to the Agile methodology. We value individuals collaboration, and change responsiveness more than processes, tools and plans.

• Accessibility: GeoGirafe is doing its best to make web content more accessible to individuals with disabilities: View Wave Report.

Architecture

Architectural choices made for the GeoGirafe project, including strategic objectives and technological choices, is explained in details here: https://doc.geomapfish.dev/docs/architecture.

Getting Started

If you want to get started with GeoGirafe, the simplest way is to use the Docker Container : https://hub.docker.com/r/geogirafe/viewer. This will allow you to get a running instance of GeoGirafe with minimum effort. Please follow the small documentation in the Docker Hub Readme.

Work with GeoGirafe

Development

1. Clone repository

First, install Node.

Then, clone the Repository:

git clone https://gitlab.com/geogirafe/gg-viewer.git
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2. Development Certificates

Certain features (e.g. service workers) require a valid HTTPS certificate for local development.
The project already ships with a set of pre-generated development certificates, which allow you to start developing immediately without extra setup.

⚠️ However, generating your own certificates is strongly recommended for:

• Better security and isolation between environments/developers.
• Avoiding reuse of shared certificates.
• Customizing certificate properties (hostname, expiration date, etc.).

2.1. If you want to generate your own development certificates

Requirements: docker installed.
Run:

On Linux

On Linux or macOS, generating your own certificates is mandatory (pre-generated ones won't work).

npm run generate-dev-certs-nix
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On Windows

npm run generate-dev-certs-win
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2.2. If you did not generate your own certificates (Windows only)

If you skipped the generation step on Windows, you must trust the pre-generated certificates so they work for features like service workers.
Run:

npm run trust-default-dev-certs-win
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3. Build and start GeoGirafe

npm install
npm start
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When working locally with authentication, and more generally with cookies, browsers treat single-label domains (domains without any dots) differently from multi-label domains (domains with at least one dot). Cookies set on single-label domains are often considered less secure because they can be more easily spoofed or misused. As a result, many browsers restrict or do not allow cookies to be set on single-label domains like localhost.

Therefore, working against https://localhost will NOT work, because the cookies cannot be correctly set.
You'll have to use https://app.localhost, which has been defined as the default domain when working locally with GeoGirafe.

Further discussions about this:

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7346919/chrome-localhost-cookie-not-being-set
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1134290/cookies-on-localhost-with-explicit-domain

Debugging using VSCode

If you are using VSCode, there is a preconfigured debugging configuration in the .vscode directory.
After you've started the application in development mode, just press F5, and VSCode will attach to the running process. You will then be able to debug your code.

Configuration

The complete configuration of the application is done in the file config.json. This configuration will be loaded dynamically when the application starts. Therefore it is not necessary to rebuild the project when you modify this file.

The file config.json does not exists by default. The simplest way to create one is to pick up an existing one in the demo directory, and to adapt the content to your needs.

You can also preconfigure GeoGirafe for an existing demo configuration by using:

On Linux

npm run configure-demo <environment>
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On Windows

npm run configure-demo-win <environment>
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This will automatically copy the config.json file in the right place, and download the needed Mock objects.

Please note that today, the GeoGirafe Viewer is using a backend based on GeoMapFish. The services you will have to use in your configuration must therefore be compliant with GeoMapFish.

Build for Production

npm install
npm run build
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This will output a complete built GeoGirafe app which can be served by a Webserver easily in the dist/app folder.

You can try the built asset with (you need docker for this example!):

docker run --rm -p 8088:80 -v $(pwd)/dist/app:/usr/share/nginx/html nginx:latest
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This will spin up an NGINX and you can access it on app.localhost:8088.

Press CTRL+C to stop the container.

Build the NPM Package

Make sure to have run the command npm login before at least once

Build the library

npm install
npm run build-lib
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This will output (beside others) a transpiled version of GeoGirafe's library part into dist/lib.

Publish Lib Package to npmjs.com

npm run publish-lib --access public
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Build the Android Application

Make sure you have build the application for production before with npm run build.
The file config.json present in the dist\app directory will be used.

npm run build-apk
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This will output an APK package of GeoGirafe into dist/apk.

Deployment

The deployment can be done in 2 ways:

Using an existing WebServer

After the build, everything that needs to be deployed is in the public directory. Copy the public directory content to any webserver, for example in the htdocs directory.

Using Docker

When the project has been built, you can build a docker image that will contains the application:

docker build -t <your_name>/viewer -f buildtools/Dockerfile dist
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Then, you can start it:

docker run -p 8080:80 -p 8443:443 <your_name>/viewer
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Contributing

Merge-Requests are welcome. For major changes, please open an issue first to discuss what you would like to change.
Contribution guidelines are available here: CONTRIBUTING.md.
Please read them before contributing.

License

Apache License, Version 2.0