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Development setup

This guide summarizes local development for the Fanar application. For self-hosted deployment, see Setting up Fanar.

Prerequisites​

  • Docker and Docker Compose
  • uv for Python dependencies
  • Node 18 and Yarn 1.22 for the frontend (use nvm)

Environment variables​

Create a .env file at the repository root:

FLASK_APP=fanar.wsgi:app
FANAR_COOKIE_SECRET=thisIsNotSecure
FANAR_SECRET_KEY=thisIsNotSecure
OPENAI_API_KEY=notAnActualKey
DB_PORT=5432
DB_NAME=fanar
DB_USER=fanar
DB_PASS=fanar
DB_HOST=postgres

See Environment variables for the full list.

Backend​

VS Code devcontainers are recommended. Otherwise:

uv sync
uv venv && source .venv/bin/activate
uv run make format   # ruff format/lint

Frontend​

nvm use 18
npm install -g yarn@1.22.22
make build
make create_database
make up          # run stack
make start       # dev server with hot reload

End-to-end tests​

Cypress tests live under client/cypress/. See the application repository README for yarn cypress commands.

Further reading​