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CONTRIBUTING.md

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Contributor guidelines

First of all, thanks for taking the time to contribute!

Tables of contents

Goal of the project

Better TweetDeck's goal is to improve TweetDeck by:

  • adding features that brings it to parity with other Twitter clients
  • adding features that Twitter will likely never add

However, it is not made to:

  • fix TweetDeck's bugs. Most of the technical regressions are almost impossible for a 3rd party extension to fix.
  • add anything that tracks, spies, and exposes users to ads.
  • add features that work around or violate Twitter's terms of service.

Project's principles

TweetDeck is a complicated piece of software, and Better TweetDeck isn't simple either. This is why when I add new features to Better TweetDeck, I try to stick to a few principles:

  • Keep it simple. This applies to both the code behind a feature and the feature itself.
  • Be as defensive as possible. Writing a browser extension is like trying to shoot a moving target, so it's helpful to try to write the code in such a way that it doesn't entirely fall apart if TweetDeck changes something overnight.

Building the project locally

** First-time installation**

  1. Install git
  2. Install node.js (version >= 15)
  3. Fork this repository
  4. Clone the project
  5. Run npm install in the repository's folder

Build commands

Below, <browser> can be one of those values:

  • firefox: for Firefox
  • firefox-beta: is only used on CI to build a private, nightly version of the extension
  • chrome: for Edge/Chrome
  • safari: for Safari

npm run start:<browser> will clean dist/, build Better TweetDeck in development mode and start a watch task that will rebuild the extension change changes files

npm run build:<browser> will clean dist/ and build Better TweetDeck in development mode and stop

npm run build:prod:<browser> will clean dist/ and build Better TweetDeck in production mode and stop

Check the section below when it comes to loading the extension.

Lint and test commands

npm run fix will run eslint --fix and fix various code style/formatting issues if possible

npm run lint will run eslint and report various code style/formatting issues

npm run typecheck will run TypeScript's type-checking and exit

npm run typecheck:watch will run TypeScript's type-checking in watch mode

Misc commands

npm run run:firefox will open a Firefox instance with the extension loaded and updated when the content of dist/ changes

npm run release will build the extension for all browsers to prepare for a new release

npm run update-xcode will change the XCode files to reflect the current version number

npm run pack:safari will update the XCode files and build the project for Safari

Loading the extension into your browser

Chrome/Edge

  1. Go to Menu->More tools->Extensions and tick the Developer Mode checkbox.
  2. Click Load unpacked extension and select the /dist/ folder.
  3. Any time you make changes, you must go back to the Menu->More tools->Extensions page and Reload the extension.

Firefox

  1. Go to about:debugging and tick the Enable add-on debugging checkbox.
  2. Click Load Temporary Add-on and select /dist/manifest.json (not the /dist folder).
  3. Any time you make changes, you must go back to the about:debugging page and Reload the extension.

Alternatively, you can use npm run run:firefox to open a particular instance of Firefox that reloads when the content of dist/ changes.

Technical details

The project uses TypeScript for most of the code. The UI of the settings page and of (some of) the UI injected into TweetDeck use React.

Project structure

Top-level files and folders

  • artifacts/: release files are generated into this folder
  • config/: configuration files picked up by Webpack at build time
  • definitions/: contains custom TypeScript definitions for packages that don't have any
  • dist/: build output
  • package-lock.json
  • safari/: contains the XCode project necessary to build the extension for Safari
  • src/: Source code
  • tools/: various scripts and definitions of the manifest files
  • tsconfig.json: TypeScript configuration file
  • webpack/: Webpack related files
  • webpack.config.js: Webpack configuration file

Rundown of src/

  • _locales/: contains localization files
  • assets/: images and icon files are usually inline as data-URI by Webpack
  • components/: contains React/DOM components
  • features/: contains all the code of the features injected into TweetDeck
  • helpers/: contains utility code to deal with various aspects of Better TweetDeck. Code in those folders should be stateless
  • services/: the stateful cousin of helpers/.
  • types/: contains useful typings for deal with Better TweetDeck/Twitter stuff

About the config

The Webpack configuration uses the Define plugin to expose secrets and configuration variables. They are available through BtdConfig in src/defineConfig.ts.

DO NOT COMMIT YOUR CONFIGURATION FILE. DO NOT COMMIT API KEYS OR SECRET.

Coding guidelines

General guidelines

I won't discuss the formatting style because ESLint and Prettier will take care of that when you commit your changes.

However, I will go over a few "best practices" I try to stick to when writing code for Better TweetDeck:

  • Comment your code. Don't write comments on every line, but if you write code that is a bit complex/weird, leave a comment.
  • Keep it simple. There's no need to be overly clever; the most straightforward solution might be the best one.
  • Do not abbreviate variable and function names. TypeScript has excellent completion, so take advantage of it.
  • TypeScript allows us to use modern features of JavaScript, so don't feel shy about using them!

TypeScript

Naming conventions

Avoid abbreviations

TypeScript gives use good autocompletion, meaning typing the full name of symbols is rarely needed. You can therefore avoid abbreviations that make the code harder to read.

// Bad
class HttpSvc {}

// Good
class HttpService {}

Types

In order to tell them apart from Js variables, types names should use PascalCase, avoid any prefix/suffix denoting the kind of the type such as I for interfaces.

// Bad
interface myObject {}
interface ImyObject {}
type fooType = {};
enum actionsEnum {}

// Good
interface MyObject {}
type Foo = {};
enum Actions {}

Avoid default exports

To make refactoring and auto importing easier, always use named exports.

// Bad
import Stuff from './stuff';

// Good
import {Stuff} from './stuff;

Use async/await

async/await really simplifies writing asynchronous code. It sometimes gets more verbose, but it really makes it easier to reason above async code.

// Bad
function myRequest() {
  return new Promise((resolve) => resolve(1));
}

myRequest().then((res) => console.log({res}));

// Better
async function myRequest() {
  return 1;
}

const result = await myRequest();

Use enums

Enums are a very nice feature of TypeScript. I tend to use them instead of string literals for constants that are re-used or given by an API.

// Bad
const action = api.action;

switch (action) {
  case 'foo': {}
  case 'bar': {}
  default: {}
}

// Better
enum Actions {
  FOO = 'foo'
  BAR = 'bar'
}
const action = api.action;

switch (action) {
  case Actions.FOO: {}
  case Actions.BAR: {}
  default: {}
}

Ok, I'm done. What do I do now?

Awesome! I'm sure your feature or bugfix is amazing 🎉

  • Commit your changes to your feature branch
  • Test your feature/bugfix locally by building the extension given above and be sure it works the way it should.
  • Submit a Pull Request if your changes are done and working
  • Wait for feedback on your Pull Request and make changes if necessary
  • Enjoy the heartwarming feeling of your feature being merged