Welcome to Doenet!

The Distributed Open Education Network (Doenet) is an open data-driven educational technology platform designed to measure and share student interactions with web pages. It includes tools for authoring interactive educational content, including our custom DoenetML markup language, and conducting educational research using the content. Our ultimate goal is to provide research-based tools to help instructors and learners discover the most effective content. Simply put, Doenet gives teachers complete flexibility over their educational content and gives them power of anonymized student data to track learning outcomes. With Doenet, we hope to help teachers teach better and students learn better.

Although we are still in the early stages, we are excited to introduce Doenet and illustrate the richly interactive activities that one can author with it.

For more background and information on the Doenet project, see this MAA DUE Point article.

We would love to hear from you! Join our Discord to ask questions and stay updated on our progress!

What We Use

Doenet is built using React and bundled for the web using Snowpack. Data for Doenet is stored in MySQL tables and components have been tested in Cypress. We use Docker to ship and run Doenet and our container uses Apache, Snowpack, PHP, MySQL, and RTNode. For reference, the container is set up to use port 80 for the local Downet website, port 8080 for the build site, and port 3306 for MySQL. You may have to change the ports used on your local device.

Getting Started

Doenet is open-source so that instructors and learners can customize it to best serve their needs. To start developing:

1. Fork the DoenetTools repository.

   To enable the v2 docker compose CLI on Linux, install the docker-compose-plugin.

2. Open the repository and run npm install to install all modules used by Doenet.

3. To start your local version of Doenet, run npm start and view it in the browser at http://localhost:80.

• If you are working with databases, we recommend installing Sequel Ace on MacOS or MySQL Workbench on Windows and Linux.

Basic Scripts

- npm start / docker compose up

Creates and starts the Docker container and runs the app in development mode. Open http://localhost:80 to view it in the browser.

The page will reload if you make edits. You will also see any lint errors in the console.

- docker compose down

Stops and removes the Docker container created by docker compose up.

While switching between branches, it is good practice to docker compose down and then docker compose up to view the correct version of the development site.

- npm run start:db

Starts the MySQL database.

- npm run reset:db

Resets the MySQL database. Running this command often fixes minor database loading issues.

- npm run publish:db

Takes the current local database and replaces the default one in the project to propagate database changes for the local code developers.

- npm run build

Builds a static copy of your site to the build/ folder. Your app is ready to be deployed!

For the best production performance: Add a build bundler plugin like "@snowpack/plugin-webpack" to your snowpack.config.js config file.

- npm test

Launches the application test runner. Run with the --watch flag (npm test -- --watch) to run in interactive watch mode.

Troubleshooting Common Issues

• Can not find the doenet_local database
  • run npm create:db and then npm reset:db
• esbuild fails to install
  • move to a node version 17.4 or higher
• cypress does not run
  • run npm install on your local machine first
• dev container crashes due to cypress error
  • make sure you have placed all cypress related dependencies in the optional category with --save-optional
• course creation or other basic functions are not working after an update
  • run npm reset:db

- Can not find the doenet_local database

Run npm create:db and then npm reset:db.

- Esbuild fails to install

Move to a node version 17.4 or higher.

- Cypress does not run

Remember to run npm install on your local machine.

- Dev container crashes due to cypress error

Make sure all cypress related dependencies have been placed in the optional category with --save-optional tag.

- Course creation or other basic functions are not working after an update

Run npm reset:db.