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# ARSnova
ARSnova is a modern approach to Audience Response Systems (ARS). It is released
under the GPLv3 license, and is offered as a Software as a Service free of
charge. Head over to [arsnova.eu](https://arsnova.eu/) to see it in action.
ARSnova consists of two projects: the mobile frontend and the backend. This
repository contains the backend code. You will find the frontend at
thm-projects/arsnova-mobile. However, you do not need to download both
repositories in order to get started.
[](https://travis-ci.org/thm-projects/arsnova-backend)
The most convenient way to get started developing ARSnova is by using our
[Vagrant](http://www.vagrantup.com/) environment, found at
[thm-projects/arsnova-vagrant](https://github.com/thm-projects/arsnova-vagrant).
Use your IDE on your host machine to make changes to ARSnova, while the build
process is completely handled by the Vagrant box. You will not need to install
any development tools.
[arsnova-vagrant](https://github.com/thm-projects/arsnova-vagrant) sets up a
virtual machine for both development and production use. The basic usage is
`vagrant up`, which will start the development environment. If you wish to start
production as well, use `vagrant up production`.
Once any machine has been started, all required ARSnova repositories are
automatically cloned from GitHub, so that you can start coding immediately.
To connect to your development machine, type `vagrant ssh`. After that, you can
start ARSnova inside the machine by running `./start.sh`. You can then access
ARSnova from your host machine by opening http://localhost:8080.
### QA Private Build
[arsnova-vagrant](https://github.com/thm-projects/arsnova-vagrant) also sets up
the build environment we use internally at THM, which consists of
[Jenkins](http://jenkins-ci.org/) and [SonarQube](http://www.sonarqube.org/).
The former provides a QA pipeline that builds, tests, analyzes, and finally
deploys ARSnova to the production environment. SonarQube is used for the
analyzation phase and provides a drill-down into many quality aspects, including
[technical debt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_debt).
While the development environment is running, Jenkins and SonarQube are
available at:
- http://localhost:9000 (SonarQube)
- http://localhost:9090 (Jenkins)
### QA Public Build
We also leverage the cloud provided by [Travis CI](https://travis-ci.org/) and
[Sauce Labs](https://saucelabs.com/) to build and test ARSnova. Travis first
builds and unit tests the software, then it instructs Sauce Labs to run smoke
tests on different browsers and operating systems. This ensures that the basic
features of ARSnova work across browsers and platforms. See
[this example](https://saucelabs.com/tests/4beecf8c754f418da0b75259c039c077) to
get an idea.
Our official build status provided by Travis CI:
- [](https://travis-ci.org/thm-projects/arsnova-backend) for ARSnova Backend
- [](https://travis-ci.org/thm-projects/arsnova-mobile) for ARSnova Mobile
## Development
This is ARSnova's main repository. Almost all dependencies are managed for you
by Maven.
If you have no intention in contributing, you might want to consider downloading
one of our pre-built WAR archives. You will find them on our
[GitHub releases page](https://github.com/thm-projects/arsnova-backend/releases).
ARSnova consists of two main projects: ARSnova Backend (this repository) and
ARSnova Mobile.
Because all dependencies are handled by Maven, a complete build is done with:
mvn install
*Note:* Java 1.8 JDK is required and must be installed prior to building
### Requirements
You need three things to get started developing ARSnova:
1. the configuration file,
2. a CouchDB database including several view documents,
3. and a development server.
We will cover all three in the following sections.
#### Configuration
You will need to do some configuration work upfront: add a new directory
"arsnova" in `/etc`, and create a copy of
[arsnova.properties.example](src/main/resources/arsnova.properties.example) named
`arsnova.properties` in this directory. Then change the settings to match your
environment, e.g. you might want to change the URLs.
Also, don't forget to change all properties starting with `couchdb`, if you do
not want to use our defaults. The properties are used in the next section.
*A note to Windows users*: our settings are based on Linux and Mac environments.
We do not officially support Windows, so you have to do some extra steps. The
property file's path is hard coded in
[spring-main.xml](src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/spring/spring-main.xml) and in the
"Setup Tool" (see next section). You want to change the paths to make them match
your environment.
We provide a Python script that will set up all database essentials. This "Setup
Tool" is located at
[thm-projects/arsnova-setuptool](https://github.com/thm-projects/arsnova-setuptool).
Make sure you have configured your database credentials inside the ARSnova
configuration file (see previous section): you will need to have the entries
`couchdb.username` and `couchdb.password`.
This will create the database along with all required view documents. Note that
this script requires Python 2 and will not run with Python 3.
#### Developer Mode
The easiest way to deploy ARSnova is via Jetty:
mvn jetty:run -Dmobile.path=
This will work out of the box. ARSnova will be located at
<http://localhost:8080/>.
If you're wondering what that `-Dmobile.path=` thing is doing, this is a special
override property for Jetty. By default, this property points to a local version
of ARSnova mobile located at `../arsnova-mobile` — relative to the
location of this project. If you happen to have downloaded ARSnova mobile to
this location, you may skip the override, and just use:
mvn jetty:run
### Further Documentation
Please see our [Wiki][Wiki] for an in-depth look at development topics such as [Caching][Caching] and [ARSnova's event system][Event-System].
[Wiki]: https://github.com/thm-projects/arsnova-backend/wiki
[Caching]: https://github.com/thm-projects/arsnova-backend/wiki/Caching
[Event-System]: https://github.com/thm-projects/arsnova-backend/wiki/Event-System
If you intend to use ARSnova in productive environments, you will have to do
some additional configuration work.
### Server
In order to build up a full featured server installation containing ARSnova and
CouchDB you have to install at least the following services:
* Apache Webserver 2.2 or newer with builtin modules `mod_proxy`,
`mod_proxy_ajp` and `mod_proxy_http`
* Apache CouchDB
Make sure all services are installed. Next step is to configure the Apache
Webserver. Find the configuration file or create a new one for use with a
virtual host. This depends on your needs. At least you should have a
configuration containing these settings:
<Location />
ProxyPass ajp://127.0.0.1:8009/
ProxyPassReverse ajp://127.0.0.1:8009/
</Location>
All requests will be sent to your Apache Tomcat servlet container, using AJP
running on port 8009.
To enable the required Apache Webserver modules simply type:
# a2enmod proxy
# a2enmod proxy_ajp
# a2enmod proxy_http
The configuration is ready for development usage. Finally, you should (re)start
all services. ARSnova is now listening on HTTP port 80.
### Session Persistence
Look for your Tomcat configuration directory and change the file "context.xml"
to match this example:
<Context>
<Manager pathname="/path/to/tomcat/sessions/arsnova.ser"/>
This will enable session persistence across restarts as described
[here](http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-7.0-doc/config/manager.html#Special_Features).
To protect requests and responses you should use HTTPS and configure your Apache
Webserver installation to redirect all traffic according to this
[example](http://wiki.apache.org/httpd/RedirectSSL).
Finally you should (re)start all services. ARSnova is now listening on HTTP port
80 and 443.
### Securing Your Web Socket Connection
To provide SSL websocket encryption, you have to provide the servers SSL key and
certificate in a Java keystore. The following steps will guide you through this
process.
Use your webserver certificate, private key and certificate chain to create a
PKCS12 keystore:
openssl pkcs12 -export -in <servercert>.crt \
-inkey <serverkey>.key \
-out keystore.p12 -name 1 \
-certfile <your_cert_chain_file>
You will be asked for a password for your PKCS12 keystore. This password must be
used for importing this keystore into your java keystore. The import can be done
using this command:
keytool -importkeystore \
-deststorepass <your_java_keystore_password> \
-destkeypass <your_java_keystore_password> \
-destkeystore arsnova.jks \
-srckeystore keystore.p12 \
-srcstoretype PKCS12 \
-srcstorepass <your_pkcs12_keystore_password> \
-alias 1
Be sure to provide the correct certificate and key file names and to use the
correct passwords for your keystore.
The last step is to find your ARSnova configuration file (see step
"Configuration" above), setup the location of your Java keystore and its
password.
security.ssl=true
security.keystore=<your keystore location>
security.storepass=<your keystore password>
## Credits
ARSnova is powered by Technische Hochschule Mittelhessen - University of Applied
Sciences.