Server Setup

1) Get .env Secrets

• We have 2 .env files where we store our environment variables needed for the Icebreak app to run (ie. API keys, etc.).
• Find the .env secrets in the #secrets channel in the Discord.
• DO NOT share the .env with anyone, even if you know they are part of the team. Ask them to reach out to the Project Lead or their Team Lead directly.
• Put the frontend .env file in icebreak/packages/app.
• Put the backend env.development and env.production files in icebreak/packages/server.

2) Run the server

• At icebreak's root directory, run yarn server:start

3) (Windows-only) Allow through Firewall

• When you first run the command it will prompt you with a firewall.
• Check both and press Allow Access.

4) Check if server is running

• Head to http//:localhost:5050 in your browser.

Ngrok Setup

Ngrok will allow us to port forward a local network onto a temporary public URL. This is required since Expo can't access our local network.

1) Create an Ngrok account

• Login and find your auth token code which you'll use later in the terminal.

2) Install Ngrok

• For MacOS users, run brew install ngrok in Terminal.
• For Windows users, install ngrok here. The Windows download gives you a folder containing the ngrok executable. I highly recommend you add ngrok to your Windows PATH system environment variable so you can run ngrok from anywhere in terminal.

3) Connect your account

• Open Terminal
• Connect your ngrok account with your ngrok in terminal with the auth token you found earlier:

ngrok config add-authtoken <auth-token>

4) Fire it up

• Make sure your backend server is running.
• Run ngrok http 5050

After all those steps, congrats, you are officially finished up your environment on the server.