MetaBrainz Foundation

Run a local BookBrainz server

  • Aim: familiarize yourself with the tools needed to develop code for BookBrainz
  • Time estimate: 1 hour

This task should be fairly straightforward to complete if you know how to open a command line interface/terminal. It's advisable to use a Linux OS for this task, as BookBrainz hasn't been tested on Windows or Mac. It involves visiting the BookBrainz source code repository on GitHub, checking out the latest stable code, installing dependencies and setting up a PostgreSQL database, and then starting the site and having a look at it in a browser.

Firstly, head to the web page at https://github.com/bookbrainz/bookbrainz-site - look for the green "Clone" button and copy the URL that appears in the box. Scroll down the page a bit and you'll see the contents of the README file. Follow the instructions there to make a local copy of BookBrainz, install dependencies and set up the database.

When you've done this, you should be able to start the site by typing npm run debug. Open up a browser window and navigate to http://localhost:9099 and you should see the BookBrainz homepage. Well done for getting this far - if you like, have a look around the site and learn a bit more about it.

When you're done, create a file with a history of the commands you ran in the terminal (type history, and copy the relevant commands into a file). Then, write some comments on how you found the process, whether anything was missing from the README, and post it on the task page.

Task tags

  • bookbrainz
  • git
  • intro
  • javascript

Students who completed this task

Cristian Rios, Shi Hern Lim

Task type

  • chrome_reader_mode Documentation / Training
  • done_all Quality Assurance

Level

Beginner
close

2016