ELX - front end

Front end for ELX application. Written using Angular and Angular Material 10. Supported by smart contracts in Solidity and Firebase.

Installing and running the application

Requirements: npm 6+ (more or less), an Ethereum client and a Firebase project (optional).

Compiling the contracts

To compile contracts, Truffle is required. Install it globally using npm:

npm install -g truffle

Move to the blockchain directory and compile them:

cd blockchain
truffle compile

As a result, you should see the following output:

Compiling your contracts...
===========================
> Compiling .\contracts\AbstractEscrow.sol
> Artifacts written to C:\Users\kplich\Documents\prywatne\ELX\ELX-front-end\blockchain\build\contracts
> Compiled successfully using:
   - solc: 0.7.1+commit.f4a555be.Emscripten.clang

The compiler does not deploy the contracts on the blockchain; this will happen when users agree to a transaction.

Setting up the Firebase project

To connect the application to your own Firebase project, change the firebaseConfig object in files within the environments folder. If you don't have a Firebase project, create it. There's no guarantee if the configuration provided will work.

Running a blockchain network

For a development blockchain network, it's best to use Ganache. For a one-time run, it should be enough to run a 'quickstart' network.

To connect to the blockchain in the browser, MetaMask can be used - it's available for Chrome, Firefox, Brave and Edge. Change the network by choosing 'Custom RPC' from the dropdown menu at the top of the extension. Give your network a name in the 'Network Name' field.

In the 'New RPC URL' enter the 'RPC server' from Ganache.

You can also use a CLI version, installable using npm install ganache-cli -g.

Install and run the application locally

This application uses Node to manage its dependencies. To install it, run npm install within the top-level directory. Then, to run the application, run:

npm run local

Build and deploy the application

For a production build, run:

npm run build
npm run start

Running tests

To test the application once, run:

npm run test

To keep the tests running and watching for changes, run:

npm run test:watch

To test the contracts, you also need a blockchain network available at the address 127.0.0.1:8080. The tests might require a lot of gas to execute, therefore it is recommended to use the blockchain from Ganache CLI for tests with accounts preloaded with lots of Ethers:

truffle-cli -e 10000000000000000000

Once this or other blockchain is running, in another session of the terminal run

cd blockchain
truffle test