Installation and usage guide

1: Prerequisites

This application is written in .Net 7, and as such, if not already installed will need the .net 7 SDK downloading from: https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/download/dotnet/7.0

2: Running the application

1. Clone the solution from: https://github.com/JoshuaRHolden/BugTracker

(Please note sometimes the following file, once cloned to local machine: *“../BugTrack_UI.config* dotnet-tools.json” may be blocked, please navigate to this file, right-click, select properties and ensure the file does not say blocked, if it does, simply check the “unblock” radio button and accept the change.)

2. Open up a command prompt and change to the directory containing the solution cloned from git.

3. In the root of the directory run the command:dotnet restore then once this has completed run the next command: dotnet tool install --global dotnet-ef then finally once the entity framework tools are installed run: dotnet build.

4. Change directory to the subdirectory: "BUGTRACK_WEB_API"

5. From the web api dubdirectory run the following command: dotnet run and press enter.

6. Open up a new command prompt whilst keeping the original one open, change directory to the project solution again, but this time to the directory: “/BUGTRACK_UI”

7. To create the sql compact database run the following command: dotnet ef database update. from the bugtrack ui directory in the new console window.

8. Once the database has finished creating, type dotnet run and press enter

If the above steps were completed with success this will run both the API and the UI in kestrel web server, navigate to: https://localhost:7041/ to start using the application.

Alternatively, open up the .sln file in visual studio and just run it from visual studio after typing the following into NuGet package manager console targeting the UI : update-database to create the database.

3:Testing

From the root directory in a console window, simply type dotnet test

The application has a suite of tests for the WEB API covering both "happy" and "sad" paths, but due to time limitations I omitted any UI tests, because at this point BLAZOR UI unit testing is time intensive to set up using BUnit.

Furthermore, the repository is hooked up to github actions to automatically run the tests and build on any changes alerting me to any failures.

4:Architecture

BugTrack uses WEBAPI with entity framework (hooked up to SQL Compact, but this can easily be changed if required) for the back-end data access. The API is currently un-authenticated as with this being a BLAZOR server application all API calls are made from the server side, as such in a production environment the API would be tied down with firewall rules and bearer authorisation would be overkill.

For the client side, the application uses BLAZOR server and fluxor to create a single state application store which operates in much the same way as Redux would with react for example. Authorisation and user management is performed using ASP.net Identity.

5:Usage

The application when first visited will bounce you to the login page, a new account will need to be created, in a production environment this would send emails to request confirmation of email account etc but to streamline development and for ease of use this has been disabled.

The site is also fully functional and should display correctly and be fully usable on any device.

Once an account has been created using the register link you may then log in and use the application.

The application consists of 2 "pages", Users, and Bugs. On the bug page you can add new bugs, edit bugs and search in real time, there are also filters that can be enabled to show closed bugs and display only ones assigned to yourself. On the user page, you can change the users name and other properties as well as being able to delete users from the database or even create brand new application users.

6:Nice to haves

i: Delete bug (although closing allows a bug to be hidden It would probably be useful to be able to fully delete a bug, but this was not included in the specification)

ii: bug attachments, allow users to upload screenshots to assist with dealing with the bug.

iii: Bug updates, 1 to many linkage to allow bugs to have updates added.

iiii: Client only view page, restricted to view only bugs personally logged (or add multi tenancy support to allow bugs to be viewed raised by all members of that tenancy and updates only.

iiiii: Multi tenancy support.

Iiiiii: Email support to email updates to bugs to the entity email who raised the bug.

7:Security

The site is scanned on each build automatically using CodeQL security scan in the pipeline using github actions.