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Introduction

Before developing make sure you know how to use the app by reading the user guide first. It will make coding much easier. This guide will try to teach you about how the tool’s code works. It is a shi- boatload* of information, so don’t worry if you can’t understand it in one go, the best way to understand how it works is to try developing it first. A couple of pointers:

• At the time of writing this handover document, the code is quite disorganized and it isn’t clear what every function does as there aren’t comments for everything.
• As you work on the tool, always make sure that what you’ve written will make sense to other developers. This means writing docstrings/comments, and naming things properly. Most importantly, DO NOT use global variables (joke).

Setup

Electron

This app is built using electron, which essentially allows you to turn a website into a desktop application. This means that the app is built using HTML, CSS, and JS. You should have an intermediate understanding of these languages before starting.

Prerequisites

Refer here: https://www.electronjs.org/docs/latest/tutorial/tutorial-prerequisites You will need to enable windows developer mode before starting. This requires admin privileges so call IT to get this done (don’t put in a ticket, they’ll take weeks). There are several tools you will need to install before you can get started. You’ll need to get the local/portable versions of them as we don’t have admin privileges ☹.

• Code editor

• Use VScode and make your life easier.

• Git + Github

• You’ll need Git and a Github account. Github desktop is highly recommended as it will make it easier to clone repositories and switch branches.

• node.js + npm