This branch has a small Node application that automatically transforms prose definition contributions into data files.

Once configured, deployed, and set as a web hook in Github, this app will take care of syncing any contributions inside the definitions directory of the master branch as JSON equivalents on the gh-pages branch.

First, register a new OAuth token from Github, tied to the user or organization that runs the glossary project this is meant to integrate with. e.g., for unitedstates/glossary, you register an application with the unitedstates organization.

You can configure the app by either:

• copying config.js.example to config.js and filling in fields (lower case below). Good for local or traditional deployment.
• not creating a config.js, and using environment variables (upper case below). Good for Heroku or other PaaS deployment.

The fields you definitely need to fill in are:

• github_token/GITHUB_TOKEN: Your OAuth token you registered with Github above.
• committer_name/COMMITTER_NAME: Full name to attach to commits this app makes.
• committer_email/COMMITTER_EMAIL: Email address to attach to commits this app makes.

You may want to change the following fields:

• owner / OWNER: The user or organization handle owning the repository, defaults to unitedstates
• repository / REPOSITORY: The name of the repository, defaults to glossary
• from_branch / FROM_BRANCH: The branch with prose definitions, defaults to master
• to_branch / TO_BRANCH: The branch with data definitions, defaults to gh-pages

You can also change the port it runs on using a port field in config.js, or a PORT.

This project is in the dat branch, so when deploying to Heroku, run:

git push heroku dat:master

This will push this repository's dat branch to Heroku's master branch, which will trigger the deploy.

I found testing easiest by forking the repository, and using a convenient tunnelling service like ngrok to make a port on my development machine (my laptop) accessible to the public Internet. Then I added the URL ngrok created to my fork's webhooks and could easily test during development.

You can use the /refresh endpoint with a path parameter to trigger a reprocessing of every definition inside that path.

For example, visiting:

/refresh?path=definitions/congress

Will trigger a regeneration of each definition inside definitions/congress.

This is not recursive - it will only affect definitions directly inside the given directory.