Pluto Headers

Pluto-headers is a library that contains UI components re-used across multiple Pluto services, most notably the header and menu bars and the login code.

How to install it

pluto-headers now publishes via a Github NPM repository. In order to use this, you'll need to create a file called .npmrc in the root of the project you want to import the library into, and put the following content into it:

@guardian:registry=https://npm.pkg.github.com

This tells yarn and npm to use the Github repo for the @guardian organisation instead of using the default npm.org repo.

Now, simply add the library as a dependency in your package.json:

"@guardian/pluto-headers": "1.6.5"

Make sure that you use the latest version, as shown under Releases on the github front page.

When running locally, you will need to authenticate to the github npm repository like this:

 npm login --scope=@guardian --registry=https://npm.pkg.github.com
npm notice Log in on https://npm.pkg.github.com/
Username: ([email protected]) github-user
Password: 
Email: (this IS public) [email protected]
Logged in as github-user on https://npm.pkg.github.com/.

If you don't log in, yarn will complain:

error Couldn't find package "@guardian/pluto-headers" on the "npm" registry.

If you see this error:

error An unexpected error occurred: "https://npm.pkg.github.com/@guardian%2fpluto-headers: Your token has not been granted the required scopes to execute this query. The 'summary' field requires one of the following scopes: ['read:packages'], but your token has only been granted the: ['repo'] scopes. Please modify your token's scopes at: https://github.com/settings/tokens.".

Then it means that you need to go to the Tokens page on github (while logged in of course!) and add the read_packagesscope.

If you want to develop the library itself see "Local Development" below.

Help! I installed it locally and it broke my dev environment! - see the section "Local Development" below. Or if you are very impatient, try:

rm -rf node_modules/pluto-headers/node_modules 

Provided components

Header

The "Header" is the static blue bar that sits across the top of all the pluto components and looks like this:

Usage:

  <Header/>

AppSwitcher

The "AppSwitcher" is the menu bar which also provides log-in/log-out functionality:

The actual content from the menus is loaded from a file which is expected to be presented at /meta/menu-config/menu.json.

This is provided by the pluto-start component and is over-ridden by runtime configuration in the actual deployment.

It's expected to take the form of an array of objects, like this:

[
  {
    "type": "{link|submenu}",
    "text": "Presented text",
    "href": "https://link.location [only for the 'link'] type",
    "content": [
      //[only for the 'submenu' type]
      {
        "type": "link",
        "text": "Presented text",
        "href": "https://link.location"
      }
    ]
  }
]

The app switcher also loads in oauth configuration for the purpose of initiating the oauth login flow by sending the user to the IdP when you click the 'login" button.

It supports callbacks to notify a parent of login/logout events

Usage:

  <AppSwitcher
    onLoggedIn={()=>alert("user logged in")}
    onLoggedOut={()=>alert("user logged out")}
    onLoginValid={(valid, jwtDataShape)=>alert(`login ${valid ? "was" : "was not"} valid. User profile data: ${jwtDataShape}`)}
  />

Breadcrumb

The breadcrumb is a commission -> project -> master trail that is used at the top of pluto-core and pluto-deliverables pages to allow the user to directly jump to parent objects, even across apps.

It performs REST requests to the relevant (pluto-core or pluto-deliverables) backend in order to determine the presentable information for a given deliverable or project. If the backend is not available, then a warning is displayed.

The images and styles are bundled in, so you don't have to worry about including them in a specific place.

Usage:

  <Breadcrumb
    masterId={optionalMasterIdNumber}
    projectId={optionalProjectIdNumber}
    commissionId={optionalCommissionIdNumber}
   />

The optional plutoCoreBaseUri parameter allows you to override the relative base url of pluto-core from the default value /pluto-core. It's not expected to be of any use in the "real world".

Icons

The icons used in the Breadcrumb are available as separate SVG icons, which can be imported into your components.

In order to make this work, you'll need to set up your module bundler to import and transpile SVG images correctly. Our webpack configuration looks like this:

var config = {
  module: {
        rules: [
          {
            test: /\.svg$/i,
            use: [
              {
                loader: 'url-loader',
                options: {
                  generator: (content) => svgToMiniDataUri(content.toString()),
                },
              },
            ],
          }
        ]
    }
}

With url-loader set up as above, you can use the icon in a component like so:

import IconWorkingGroup from "pluto-headers/src/static/w.svg";

return <div>
  <img src={IconWorkingGroup} alt="W" style={{width: "32px", height: "32px"}}/>
</div>

You should always specify a fixed width and height because the raw images render very large

SystemNotification

The SystemNotification component is a popup message notification that can be used in all frontend services. You need to put the <SystemNotification> component into your root page, and then you can "open" the notification from any code, including callbacks.

There are four severity states:

• SystemNotifcationKind.Success
• SystemNotifcationKind.Error
• SystemNotifcationKind.Info
• SystemNotifcationKind.Warning

Each of these uses the background colour associated with the given state in the theme. Default values are green, red, blue and orange respectively. For this reason, you should make sure that <SystemNotification/> goes inside <ThemeProvider></ThemeProvider>.

Each is also automatically provided with a suitable icon by the <Alert> component

Usage example:

index.[tj]sx:

import {SystemNotification} from "pluto-headers";
import {ThemeProvider} from "@material-ui/styles";

render()
{
  <ThemeProvider>
    <etc/>
    <SystemNotification/>
    <RestOfYourStuff/>
  </ThemeProvider>
}

somecomponent.tsx:

import {SystemNotifcationKind, SystemNotification} from "pluto-headers";

fetch("some-resource")
  .then(()=>SystemNotification.open(SystemNotifcationKind.Success, "Loaded content"))
  .catch((err)=>SystemNotification.open(SystemNotifcationKind.Warning, `Could not load content: ${err.toString()}`))

This will show a green message if the content loads OK or an orange one if it does not, with the given text.

The message should auto-close in 3 seconds.

UserContext

UserContext is a React context provider that can be used to make user login details available to arbitary componets without resorting to "prop drilling". (For more information about Contexts in react, see https://reactjs.org/docs/context.html)

In order to use it, you must position the "provider" as a parent component high-up in the tree; normally this meens putting it into your root component.

In order to populate it, however, you need to have a local state var to hold the current user profile information and you need to set/unset it in response to login and logout events.

This can be done via the callbacks available from <AppSwitcher>.

Here is an example of how to use it:

index.tsx:

import React, {useState} from "react";
import {UserContext, UserContextProvider, Header, AppSwitcher, JwtDataShape} from "pluto-headers";
import {ThemeProvider} from "@material-ui/styles";
import {CssBaseline} from "@material-ui/core";

const indexComponent = () => {
  const [userProfile, setUserProfile] = useState < JwtDataShape|undefined >(undefined);
  
  const setLogin = (isValid: boolean, profile: JwtDataShape) => {
      if(isValid) {
          setUserProfile(profile);
      } else {
          setUserProfile(undefined);
      }
  }
  
  return (
          <div style={{width: "100vw", height: "100vh", overflow: "hidden"}}>
            <ThemeProvider theme={theme}>
              <CssBaseline/>
              <Header/>
              <AppSwitcher onLoginValid={setLogin}/>
              <UserContextProvider value={{
                  profile: userProfile,
                  updateProfile: (newValue) => setUserProfile(newValue)
              }}>
                /*now comes your normal routing stuff - Switch, Route etc.*/
                      <Switch>
                              <Route></Route>
                      </Switch>
              </UserContextProvider>
            </ThemeProvider>
          </div>
  )
}

Now, with the setup above the contents of the userProfile state variable at the top level is available to any component that lives anywhere in the DOM tree below <UserContextProvider> (in this example, in any subcomponent that is availbel via react-router). This is most convenient through a hook in a functional component, like so:

examplecomponent.tsx:

import {useContext} from "react";
import {UserContext} from "pluto-headers";
import {Typography} from "@material-ui/core";

const exampleComponent = () => {
  const userContext = useContext(UserContext);

  return (
          <Typography>
            {
              userContext ? `You are ${userContext.profile.username}` : "You are not logged in"
            }
          </Typography>
  )
}

But you can also use context in a class-based component

classbased.jsx:

import React from "react";
import {UserContext} from "pluto-headers";
import {Typography} from "@material-ui/core";

class ExampleClassComponent extends React.Component {
    static contextType = UserContext;
    
    render() {
        return (
            <Typography>
              {
                this.context ? `You are ${this.context.profile.username}` : "You are not logged in"
              }
            </Typography>
        )
    }
}

As you can see from the index.tsx sample above, the profile property of the context object is a JwtDataShape, which is defined in utils/DecodedProfile.ts - you can see the user profile information available there.

OAuthContext

OAuthContext is a context provider like UserContext which provides details of the OAuth configuration. This is needed if you want to have a login button in your app. It's only useful for pluto-start and AppSwitcher, really.

Utilities

Interceptor

This provides an axios "interceptor" (callback placed in the response chain) which will automatically attempt to refresh the login token if a "permission denied" is received.

OAuth2Helper

This provides the code necessary to request a token refresh using a provided "refresh token".

OAuthConfiguration

This provides the interface prototypes for the json configuration that allows us to contact an oauth provider. It also provides the 'ti-interface-checker' generated code that allows us to verify correct data shape at runtime.

DecodedProfile

This provides the interface prototype for the JWT-based user profile along with a proxy that simplifies finding data.

JwtHelpers

This provides utility code that downloads the signing key, verifies the provided key and decodes the user profile.

React component library

Since this is a react component library with dependencies such as react and material ui, it is required that these are used as peerDependencies, otherwise these would collide with the external applications dependencies that is using this react component library.

Local development

In order to test updates to the library "in-situ" (i.e. in a real app in the browser) you need to link it into an app locally (referred to here as the "host project"), rebuild the host project and then redeploy it.

If the UI refuses to load and you see an error about "breaking the rules of hooks", then pay special attention to step 4.

• Build the library

  yarn && yarn build
  

• In host project's package.json, update pluto-headers dependency by adding a relative path to the root

  "pluto-headers": "file:<relative-path-to-pluto-headers-root>"
  

• In external repository, install the added dependency

  sed -i "" -e "/pluto-headers/d" yarn.lock #removes pluto-headers if it is already there
  yarn
  

• In external repository, find the node_modules directory for pluto-headers that was copied, and delete it:

  rm -rf node_modules/@guardian/pluto-headers/node_modules
  

  This removes extraneous copies of react, material-ui etc. which otherwise conflict with the component you were testing.

  If, when you load your built service, you see a blank screen and a console error complaining about "Not following the rules of hooks", then you need to double-check that you have performed this step.

  The node_modules directory is ignored for git, so when you install via the git repo you don't get it and the library falls back to using the dependent libraries that are installed by the host project.

  When you install from your local "file:", you do have node_modules and where it contains react, react-dom, material-ui etc. these conflict with the host project's own ones and result in the "hooks" error. Simply deleting them out brings the installation back into line with how it should work.

  See https://www.claritician.com/how-to-create-a-local-react-typescript-library-that-i-can-use-across-my-react-projects for more information - it recommends putting the rm -rf in a "postinstall" script but if you do this it deletes the whole node_modules folder immediately after the yarn install has created it, so you can't test or build.

• Once you have removed the extraneous node_modules, Build the host project you are testing with:

  yarn dev
  sbt docker:publishLocal or docker build . -t guardianmultimedia/... or other thing to build the package
  

  Then deploy it to your prexit-local environment by checking that you are asking for the correct container version and deleting the current pod.

• Now, you're going to want to make some changes to the library and test them; so you go back to the start and follow the instructions again. But, when you run step two above, you'll see that nothing gets installed. This is because the yarn install you ran updates the yarn.lock file and yarn thinks that since the library version is the same it does not need installing.

  While you could change the version number every single time, I find it easier to manually go into the yarn.lock file each time I want to test the library and remove the pluto-headers block, then save.

  yarn or yarn install will then re-copy the library with the new updates you have made, and you need to remove the extraneous node_modules directory again and rebuild the host project frontend before the host project frontend will run properly.

Build and publish

• Publish

  • Get your PR reviewed and merged to main
  • Check out main and pull it
  • Create a new version

    yarn version
    

  • Push the changes

    git push --follow-tags
    

• Create a release

  • Go to the Github frontpage and click the "Releases" title on the right-hand side
  • Click "Draft new release" at the top-right of the "Releases" window that opens
  • Use "Choose a tag" to find the tag you just created
  • Click "Publish Release". You don't need to fill the other fields in
  • This will kick off a build in Github Actions. Within a couple of minutes, you should see a new package version appear at https://github.com/guardian/pluto-headers/packages/1469763.

Update the other components that use this library

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS SCRIPT NEEDS UPDATING FOR GITHUB AND IS CURRENTLY OUT OF DATE

A number of the prexit components use this library, and manually updating them all can be a drag. To simplify this, a script is provided that can patch the package.json file and open a merge request on each component.

You'll need python3 installed to run it.

cd scripts
./rollout_updated_version.py --help
./rollout_updated_version.py --token {gitlab-token} --all-my-repos

In order to run it, you'll need to create a gitlab API token under your username. You can go this by going to your avatar at the top-right of the Gitlab window, selecting Preferences from the dropdown menu and then going to Access Tokens on the left-hand side of the screen.

Create a name for the access token and tick "API" under "Scopes".

Copy the presented string and save it somewhere secure (DON'T put it into this repo!!!!)

You can then run the script, as above, which will:

• iterate all of the Github projects you 'own'
• try to find a package.json file in each of them
• if a package.json file is found, download the current master version and try to find "pluto-headers" under "dependencies"
• if found, parse the git string and extract the version number and compare it to the version specified in the local package.json for pluto-headers.
• if they don't match, create a branch, update the package.json in the remote project to the version of pluto-headers that the script is running from, commit that and create a merge request.
• if the project does not have 'package.json', or it doesn't import pluto-headers, etc., it will be left alone.