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Introduction

Welcome to the Conducky Developer Documentation!

This section provides technical details for contributors and developers, including:

  • API reference
  • Data model and architecture
  • Testing and development workflows
  • Guidelines for contributing to Conducky

Getting Started​

Development Environment​

Conducky is designed to run in a Docker Compose environment for development. This ensures consistency across different development machines and mirrors the production environment.

Security and Rate Limiting​

The backend includes comprehensive security middleware:

  • Rate Limiting: Protects against brute force attacks and abuse
  • Input Validation: Server-side validation and sanitization
  • Security Headers: CSP, HSTS, and other security headers
  • Authentication: Session-based authentication with RBAC

Important for Development: Rate limiting is automatically disabled in development and test environments to allow rapid testing without interference.

Environment Variables (Standardized)​

Conducky uses environment variables for configuration. The required variables are now standardized and only those actually used by the codebase are included in the example files.

Backend (/backend)​

  • DATABASE_URL — The Postgres connection string for the database
  • SESSION_SECRET — Secret used for session middleware (set securely in production)
  • FRONTEND_BASE_URL — The base URL of the deployed frontend (e.g., http://localhost:3001)
  • CORS_ORIGIN — The public URL of the frontend (e.g., http://localhost:3001)
  • PORT — The port the backend will listen on (e.g., 4000). Optional, defaults to 4000.

See /backend/.env.example for the template. Copy it to /backend/.env and fill in the values as needed.

Frontend (/frontend)​

  • NEXT_PUBLIC_API_URL — The base URL for the backend API, used for all client-side API calls in Next.js (e.g., http://localhost:4000)
  • BACKEND_API_URL — The base URL for the backend API, used for server-side rendering (SSR) and API calls from Next.js server functions (e.g., http://localhost:4000)

See /frontend/.env.example for the template. Copy it to /frontend/.env and fill in the value as needed.

Note: Only these variables are required. Any others previously present have been removed for clarity and consistency.

TODO: Add instructions for setting up a development environment, installing dependencies, and contributing to the project.

Running Backend Tests​

Backend tests automatically load environment variables from /backend/.env.test (if present) using dotenv. Edit /backend/.env.test to configure your local test database and secrets. This ensures tests run with the correct settings, separate from your development .env.

Documenting New React Components​

When you add a new React component to the codebase (in frontend/components or its subdirectories), you must also update the documentation to include it in the auto-generated prop tables.

To do this:

  1. Open website/docs/developer-docs/AllComponents.mdx.

  2. Add a new section for your component, using the following format:

    ## MyNewComponent
    <PropTable name="MyNewComponent" />

  3. Save the file and restart the Docusaurus dev server if needed.

This will ensure your new component's props are documented automatically. For more details, see the comments in AllComponents.mdx.