WebsiteCommunityUser Documentation Free Trial
Search
⌃K
Links

Code Style Guide

We provide a .editorconfig and an .eslintrc, file that will help you to keep some standards in place.

ECMAScript vs TypeScript

We are currently adopting TypeScript as the default language on our projects, the current codebase will be migrated incrementally from JavaScript to TypeScript.
While we still have a couple of JavaScript files you should not create new ones. As much as possible new code contributions should be in TypeScript.

Blaze vs React

We are currently adopting React over Blaze as our UI engine, the current codebase is under migration and will continue. You will still find Blaze templates in our code. Code changes or contributions may need to be made in Blaze while we continue to evolve our components library.
The Fuselage is our component library based on React, check it out when contributing to the Rocket.Chat UI and feel free to contribute new components or fixes.

Standards

Most of the coding standards are covered by ESLint configured at .eslintrc, and most of them came from our own ESLint Config Package.
Things not covered by eslint:
  • Prefer longer/descriptive variable names, e.g. error vs err, unless dealing with common record properties already shortened, e.g. rid and uid
  • Use return early pattern. See more​
  • Prefer Promise over callbacks
  • Prefer await over then/catch (also valid for unit/e2e test callbacks)
  • Don't create queries outside models, the query description should be inside the model class.
  • Don't hardcode fields inside models. the same method can be used for different purposes, using different fields.
  • Prefer to create REST endpoints over Meteor methods
  • Prefer to call REST endpoints over Meteor methods when both are available
  • v1 REST endpoints should follow the following pattern: /api/v1/dashed-namespace.camelCaseAction
  • Prefer TypeScript over JavaScript. Check ECMAScript vs TypeScript
Blaze
  • Import the HTML file from its sibling JS/TS file

Best practices

  • Avoid "internal" Meteor.call - server code should not use Meteor.call

Syntax check

Before submitting a PR you should get no errors on eslint.
To check your files run:
meteor npm run lint

Tests

There are 2 types of tests we run on Rocket.Chat, Unit tests, and End to End tests. The major difference is that End to End tests require a Rocket.Chat instance running to execute the API and UI checks.

End to End Tests

First, you need to run a Rocket.Chat server on Test Mode and on an Empty Database:
# Running with a local mongodb database
MONGO_URL=mongodb://localhost/empty MONGO_OPLOG_URL=mongodb://localhost/local TEST_MODE=true meteor
# Running with a local mongodb database but cleaning it before
mongo --eval "db.dropDatabase()" empty && MONGO_URL=mongodb://localhost/empty MONGO_OPLOG_URL=mongodb://localhost/local TEST_MODE=true meteor
Now you can run the tests:
meteor npm test

Unit Tests

Unit tests are simpler to set up and run. They do not require a working Rocket.Chat instance.
meteor npm run testunit
It's possible to run on watch mode as well:
meteor npm run testunit-watch

Before Push your code

It's important to run the lint and tests before pushing your code or submitting a Pull Request, otherwise, your contribution may fail quickly on the CI. Reviewers are forced to demand fixes and the review of your contribution will be further delayed.
Rocket.Chat uses husky to run the lint and unit tests before proceeding to the code push process, so you may notice a delay when pushing your code to your repository.

Choosing a good PR title

It is very important to note that we use PR titles when creating our changelog. Keep this in mind when you title your PR. Make sure the title makes sense to a person reading a release's changelog!
Keep your PR's title as short and concise as possible, and use PR's description section, which you can find in the PR's template, to provide more details into the changelog.
Good titles require thinking from a user's point of view. Don't get technical and talk code or architecture. What is the actual user-facing feature or the bug fixed? For example:
[NEW] Allow search permissions and settings by name instead of only ID
feat: Allow search permissions and settings by name instead of only ID
Even if it brings something new to the code the users already expect the filter to filter by what they see (translations), a better one would be:
[FIX] Permissions' search doesn't filter based on presented translation, only on internal ids
fix: Permissions' search doesn't filter based on presented translation, only on internal ids

Choosing the right PR tag

You can use several tags to describe your PR, i.e.: [FIX], [NEW], etc. You can use the descriptions below to better understand the meaning of each one, and decide which one you should use:
You can use several tags to describe your PR, i.e.: fix:, feat:, etc. You can use the descriptions below to better understand the meaning of each one, and decide which one you should use:
After the release of version 6.0.0 we adopted conventional commits plead check: https://www.conventionalcommits.org/en/v1.0.0/#specification​
​
You can use several tags to describe your PR, i.e.:
feat|fix|ci|chore|docs|test|refactor|i18n|regression|revert
, etc. You can use the descriptions below to better understand the meaning of each one, and decide which one you should use:

[NEW]

feat:

When
  • When adding a new feature that is important to the end-user
How
Do not start repeating the section (Add ... , New ... or Feature... Always describe what's being fixed, improved, or added and not how it was fixed, improved, or added.
Examples of bad PR titles:
[NEW] Add the ability to set tags in the Omnichannel room closing dialog
[NEW] Adds the ability for Rocket.Chat Apps to create discussions
[NEW] Add MMS support to Voxtelesys
[NEW] Add Color variable to the left sidebar
feat: Add the ability to set tags in the Omnichannel room closing dialog
feat: Adds the ability for Rocket.Chat Apps to create discussions
feat: Add MMS support to Voxtelesys
feat: Add Color variable to the left sidebar
Examples of good PR titles:
[NEW] Ability to set tags in the Omnichannel room closing dialog
[NEW] Ability for Rocket.Chat Apps to create discussions
[NEW] MMS support to Voxtelesys
[NEW] Color variable to the left sidebar
feat: Ability to set tags in the Omnichannel room closing dialog
feat: Ability for Rocket.Chat Apps to create discussions
feat: MMS support to Voxtelesys
feat: Color variable to the left sidebar

[FIX]

fix:

When
  • When fixing something not working or behaving wrong from the end-user perspective
How
Always describe what's being fixed and not how it was fixed.
Example of a bad PR title:
[FIX] Add Content-Type for public files with JWT
fix: Add Content-Type for public files with JWT
Example of a good PR title:
[FIX] Missing Content-Type header for public files with JWT
fix: Missing Content-Type header for public files with JWT

[IMPROVE]

chore:

When
  • For small tasks such as changing a function name or something very quickly that does not fit in another category.
How
Always describe what's being changed and not how it was changed.
Example of a bad PR title:
[IMPROVE] Displays Nothing found on admin sidebar when a search returns nothing
chore: Renaming `getNewMessage` function and replacing it in all files that use this function

[BREAK]

Example of a good PR title:
chore: Rename `getNewMessage` function

docs:

When
  • For documentation such as README.md files, and other markdown and instruction files that bring value to the community
How
Always describe what's being changed and not how it was changed.

Regression

Example of a good PR title:
docs: Update Pull Request Template

refactor:

When
  • A code refactor that doesn't change behavior (it doesn't add anything and doesn't fix anything) such as: converting javascript file to typescript
Examples of good PR titles:
Regression: Fix not being able to mark room as read
Regression: Add missing field to `users` endpoint
refactor: RoomInfo to typescript

ci:

When
  • A change that updates or adds a CI configuration
Examples of good PR titles:
Fix: Missing Content-Type header for public files with JWT
ci: PR title check to use conventional commits

test:

When
  • For adding tests
Examples of good PR titles:
test: RoomInfo e2e tests

i18n:

When
  • For updating or adding any translations
Examples of good PR titles:
i18n: Homepage translations to pt-BR

regression:

When
  • When changes are made during any release candidate cycle, in order to add something missing or fix something broken during the last development cycle and not published to a final release yet.
Examples of good PR titles:
regression: Fix not being able to mark room as read
regression: Add missing field to `users` endpoint

Security Best Practices

  • Never expose unnecessary data to the APIs' responses
  • Always check for permissions or create new ones when you must expose sensitive data
  • Never provide new APIs without rate limiters
  • Always escape the user's input when rendering data
  • Always limit the user's input size on the server-side
  • Always execute the validations on the server-side even when executing on the client-side as well

Performance Best Practices

  • Prefer to inform the fields you want, and only the necessary ones, when querying data from the database over query the full documents
  • Limit the number of returned records to a reasonable value
  • Check if the query is using indexes, if it's not, create new indexes
  • Prefer queues over long executions
  • Create new metrics to measure things whenever possible
  • Cache data and returns whenever possible

Contributor License Agreement

To have your contribution accepted you must sign our Contributor License Agreement. In case you submit a Pull Request before signing the CLA GitHub will alert you with a new comment asking you to sign and will block the Pull Request from being merged by us.
Please review and sign our CLA at https://cla-assistant.io/RocketChat/Rocket.Chat​
Previous
Development Workflow
Next
Languages
Last modified 18d ago