Contributing to LWT

This guide is mainly aimed at developers, but it can give useful insights on how LWT is structured, which could help with debugging. The first step you need to take is to clone LWT from the official GitHub repository (HugoFara/lwt).

Get Composer

Getting Composer is required if you want to edit LWT on the server side, but it will also be useful to edit JS and CSS code, so it is highly recommended. Composer is a lightweight dependency manager that does not need a server to run.

Once Composer is ready, go to the lwt folder (most likely lwt/), and type

composer install --dev

This will automatically download all the required dependencies.

Create and Edit Themes

Themes are stored at src/themes/. If you want to create a new theme, simply add it to a subfolder. You can also edit existing themes.

To apply the changes you made to a theme, run

composer minify

This command will minify all CSS and JS.

Alternatively, you can run

php -r "require 'src/php/minifier.php'; minifyAllCSS();"

It minifies only CSS.

Debug your theme

You may not want to see your code minified, so you can use

composer no-minify

It has the same effect as copying the folder src/themes/ to themes/. WARNING: It can break your relative paths!

Add Images to your Themes

We support a smart minifying system: relative paths are automatically adapted to point to the previous location while minifying only. As a consequence:

• You can use images from css/images/ in your theme.
  • If your theme is under src/themes/mytheme/, you should use the path ../../../css/theimage.
• You can add your own files under your custom theme folder.
  • Hence, the path should look like ./myimage.

When debugging your theme, files are simply copied to the themes/ folder, which can break the path to files in css/.

My theme does not contain all the Skinning Files

That's not a problem at all. When LWT looks for a file that should be contained in src/themes/{{The Theme}}/, it checks if the file exists. If not, it goes to css/ and tries to get the same file. With this system, your themes do not need to have the same files as src/css/.

Change JS behavior

As with themes, LWT minifies JS code for a better user experience. Please refer to the previous section for detailed explanations; this section will only go through import points.

Edit JS code

Clear code is stored at src/js/. Once again, the actual code used by LWT should be at js/. After you have done any modification, either run composer minify or php -r "require 'src/php/minifier.php'; minifyAllJS();".

Debug JS code

To copy code in a non-obfuscated form, run composer no-minify or replace the content of js/ with src/js/.

Edit PHP code

The PHP codebase is not yet well structured, but here is a general organization:

• Pages rendered to the client are under the root folder (do_text.php, do_test.php, etc...)
• Files that should not be rendered directly are under the inc/ ("include") folder.
• Other files useful for development only are under src/php/.

Testing your Code

It is highly advised to test your code. Tests should be wrote under tests/. We use PHP Unit for testing.

To run all tests:

composer test

Alternatively:

./vendor/bin/phpunit

Security Check

We use Psalm to find code flaws and inconsistencies. Use ./vendor/bin/psalm.

You can configure the reporting level in psalm.xml.

Advice: Follow the Code Style Standards

Nobody likes to debug unreadable code. A good way to avoid thinking about it is to include phpcs directly in your IDE. You can also download it and run it regularly on your code.

You can run it through composer. Use php ./vendor/bin/squizlabs/phpcs.phar [filename] to see style violations on a file. You can fix them using

php ./vendor/bin/squizlabs/phpcbf.phar [filename]

Interact with and modify the REST API

Starting from 2.9.0-fork, LWT provides a RESTful API. The main handler for the API is api.php. You can find a more exhaustive API documentation at api.md.

If you plan to develop the API, please follow the RESTful standards. To debug:

1. Install Node and NPM.
2. Run npm install in the main LWT folder.
3. Run npm test to test the API.

Improving Documentation

To regenerate all PHP and Markdown documentation, use composer doc. For the JS documentation, you need NPM. Use ./node_modules/.bin/jsdoc -c jsdoc.json.

General Documentation

The documentation is split across Markdown (.md) files in docs/. Then, those files are requested by info.php. The final version is info.html, which contains all files.

To regenerate info.hml, run composer info.html.

PHP Code Documentation

Code documentation (everything under docs/html/ and docs/php/) is automatically generated. If you see an error, the PHP code is most likely at fault. However, don't hesitate to signal the issue.

Currently, the PHP documentation is generated two times:

• With Doxygen (run doxygen Doxyfile to regenerate it), it generates documentation for MarkDown and PHP files. It will be removed in LWT 3.0.0.
• Using phpDocumentor. phpDoc generates PHP documentation and is the preferred way to do so. You can use it through php tools/phpDocumentor if installed with Phive.

JS Code Documentation

Code documentation for JavaScript is available at docs/js/ is is generated thourgh JSDoc. The JSDoc configuration file is jsdoc.json.

New version

LWT-fork follows a strict procedure for new versions. This section is mainly intended for the maintainers, but feel free to take a peak at it.

The steps to publish a new version are:

1. In the CHANGELOG, add the latest release number and date.
2. In inc/kernel_utility.php, update LWT_APP_VERSION and LWT_RELEASE_DATE.
3. Update PROJECT_NUMBER in Doxyfile to the latest release number.
4. Regenerate documentation with composer doc.
5. Commit your changes, git commit -m "Regenerates documentation for release []."
6. Add a version tag with annotation git tag -a [release number] and push the changes.
7. If all the GitHub actions are successfull, write a new release on GitHub linking to the previously created tag.
8. The new version is live!

Other Ways of Contribution

Drop a star on GitHub

This is an open-source project. It means that anyone can contribute, but nobody gets paid for improving it. Dropping a star, leaving a comment, or posting an issue is essential because the only reward developers get from time spent on LWT is the opportunity to discuss with users.

Spread the Word

LWT is a non-profitable piece of software, so we won't have much time or money to advertise it. If you enjoy LWT and want to see it grow, share it!

Discuss

Either go to the forum of the official LWT version, or come and discuss on the community version.

Support on OpenCollective

LWT is hosted on OpenCollective, you can support the development of the app at https://opencollective.com/lwt-community.

Thanks for your interest in contributing!