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artic.edu

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Website of the Art Institute of Chicago, an art museum

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![Art Institute of Chicago](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Art-Institute-of-Chicago/template/master/aic-logo.gif)

# artic.edu
> The code that runs the main website of the Art Institute of Chicago

This repository is all the code that runs [artic.edu](https://www.artic.edu/). With artworks in our collection, exhibitions, events, articles, and more, artic.edu is the main home for our museum's presence on the web. Take a look through our code, let us know if you have any questions, and feel free to use any portion of our code you like.

In production since 2018, our website is actively maintained by a team of developers, product managers, and system administrators at the Art Institute of Chicago. See our [contributors](CONTRIBUTORS.md) for more details.

## Overview

Our website is a Laravel website built with the Twill CMS. This repo includes all frontend, the Twill CMS, and an API.

Portions of the website rely heavily on our [API](https://api.artic.edu). Check out a [talk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGXh5qkOjnQ) and a [paper](https://mw19.mwconf.org/paper/building-a-data-hub-microservices-apis-and-system-integration-at-the-art-institute-of-chicago/) describing our API's architecture, and browse the [code](https://github.com/orgs/art-institute-of-chicago/repositories?q=data-*&type=&language=&sort=) that powers our API.

## Requirements

* PHP 8.2
* Node 24.13.0 (lts/krypton)
* NPM 11.6.2
* PostgreSQL 17
* [AIC Docker](https://github.com/art-institute-of-chicago/aic-docker) `main` branch

## Installing

### Docker

For local development, we run the website in a Docker environment which provides all the software required to run the application. This replaces the previous Vagrant/Homestead setup that is no longer maintained. Download the [docker app here](https://www.docker.com/products/docker-desktop/)

## Developing

### Frontend

__Note:__ `npm` commands must be run on the host machine, *not* from inside the VM.

There are NPM packages required by the frontend of the website. To install them initially run:

```bash
npm ci
npm run build
```

For continuous work, run the following which runs as a `watch` command on locally changed JS and SCSS files:

```bash
npm run dev
```

These npm scripts are likely to be all you'll need, but they are composite commands and more granular scripts can be found by inspecting the `scripts` section of [package.json](package.json).

We recommend using [nvm](https://github.com/nvm-sh/nvm) or another node version manager to install exactly the node version listed in the requirements.

### CMS

To compile all that is needed by the CMS, run:

```bash
php artisan twill:build
```

### Upgrading Twill

Update the version of Twill in `composer.json`. Then to avoid composer running into memory issues, run:

```bash
php -d memory_limit=-1 `which composer` update area17/twill --with-dependencies --optimize-autoloader
```

There are usually local files that need updating to reflect the latest version. Look through the "Files changed" of a diff between versions in the Twill codebase: https://github.com/area17/twill/compare/2.3.0...2.4.0.

Once ready, run:

```bash
php artisan twill:update
php artisan twill:build
```

### More documentation

We've developed detailed descriptions of a few key aspects of our website codebase:

* [API models](docs/apiModels.md): How we've developed Eloquent-style model classes that are backed by our API
* [Images](docs/images.md): How to use images in the various types of models in our codebase

## Testing

The website unit tests are configured to run with its own PostgreSQL database out of the box,
see [.env.testing](.env.testing). To run the test suite:
```bash
php artisan test
```

## Contributing

We welcome your contributions. Please fork this repository and make your changes in a separate branch. To better understand how we organize our code, please review our [version control guidelines](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1B-27HBUc6LDYHwvxp3ILUcPTo67VFIGwo5Hiq4J9Jjw).

### Starting a new feature branch
```bash
# Clone the repo to your computer
git clone git@github.com:your-github-account/website.git

# Enter the folder that was created by the clone
cd website

# Install

# Start a feature branch
git checkout -b feature/good-short-description

# ... make some changes
```

### Formatting your code

We use the [PHP CodeSniffer](https://github.com/squizlabs/PHP_CodeSniffer)
tool to ensure that all of our code is consistently formatted. Before checking
in any changes, we recommend running the `lint` script:
```bash
composer lint
```

Additional arguments can be passed to PHP CodeSniffer. For example, if you wanted
to view the full lint report instead of the default summary:
```bash
composer lint -- --report=full
```

Some linting errors can be automattically addressed by PHP CodeSniffer itself and
a second tool,
[PHP Coding Standard Fixer](https://github.com/PHP-CS-Fixer/PHP-CS-Fixer).
If the lint script returns a list of errors, we recommend running the `format`
script:
```bash
composer format
```

These two tools are fairly comprehensive, but are not able to address every
linting error. You may need to manually make some formatting changes to your
code in order to pass the lint check.

### Commiting your changes
```bash
# Make sure you're working off of the latest commit on the branch
git fetch
git pull

# Commit your changes with a meaningful commit message
git commit -m "Meaningful commit message"
```

If your branch is out of sync after commit, for example:
```bash
Your branch and 'origin/feature/good-short-description' have diverged,
and have X and X different commits each, respectively.
```
You should try resetting and rebasing your branch:
```bash
# Reset your feature branch
git reset HEAD~

# Get your local branch back in sync
git rebase

# ... recommit your code
```

### Contributing your code
```bash
# Push your branch to GitHub
git push --set-upstream origin feature/good-short-description
```

Then on github.com, create a Pull Request to merge your changes into our `develop` branch.

This project is released with a Contributor Code of Conduct. By participating in this project you agree to abide by its [terms](CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md).

We welcome bug reports and questions under GitHub's [Issues](issues). For other concerns, you can reach our engineering team at [engineering@artic.edu](mailto:engineering@artic.edu)

## Acknowledgments

Thank you to everyone who has ever contributed to our website project! We appreciated all contributions, big and small. Learn more about who has worked on this project in our [contributors](CONTRIBUTORS.md) doc.

## Licensing

This project is licensed under the [GNU Affero General Public License Version 3](LICENSE).

artic.edu

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