Contributing
===============

> **Note: This project is in maintenance mode**
> 
> JSON Editor is now in maintenance mode. We continue to accept and review community pull requests for:
> - Bug fixes
> - Security updates
> - Critical improvements
> 
> For those seeking active development and new features, consider [Jedison](https://github.com/germanbisurgi/jedison).

This document briefly lists the guidelines for contributing to JSON Editor.

Reporting Bugs
----------------
When creating an issue in GitHub, try to include when feasible:
*  A brief description of the issue
*  An example JSON schema that causes the issue
*  Steps to reproduce

If you can reproduce the issue on the demo page (https://json-editor.github.io/json-editor/), it's helpful to attach the "Direct Link" url (top right of page).  Note: the direct link might not work for very large schemas or JSON values.

if your setup is more complex (i.e. setting values using JavaScript interface), you can create a test setup at sites like  https://jsfiddle.net or https://codepen.io/.


Contributing Code
--------------------------
One of the major goals of JSON Editor is to be easy to modify and hack.

If you fix a bug or add a cool feature, please submit a pull request!


### Code Style

We use the [standardjs](https://standardjs.com/) standard style, enforced by [ESLint](https://eslint.org/).

Also:

*  Use 2 spaces for indentation
*  Use comments whenever the code's meaning is not obvious
*  When in doubt, try to match the style in existing source files

To check for errors without building:
```bash
npm run eslint
```

To automatically fix errors without building:
```bash
npm run eslint.fix
```

If you absolutely *must* break a style rule you can disable a rule for the next line with a comment of the following form:
```javascript
// eslint-disable-line rule-name
```

[ESLint integrations](https://eslint.org/docs/user-guide/integrations) are provided for most IDEs. They will normally provide  highlighting of errors and suggestions for fixes.

### Development

The easiest way to hack on JSON Editor is to run `npm run debug`, which 
re-builds `dist/jsoneditor.js` every time a source file changes and serves the repo to a
development server on port 8080, so you can load test pages such as (http://localhost:8080/tests/pages/array-selectize.html) and immmediately view and debug the results.

Similarly, you can run and view the results of unit tests every time code changes by running `npm test`.

To do a production build which includes eslint and minification, run `npm build`.

We encourage you to use a [BDD](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavior-driven_development) and [TDD](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test-driven_development) approach to developing features and fixing bugs, in each case:

1. Writing end-to-end tests for your new features (`./tests/codeceptjs`)
1. Write unit tests for edits to specify and confirm correct operation of small units of code such as functions and methods (`./tests/unit`)

### Submitting Pull Requests
Try to limit pull requests to a single narrow feature or bug fix.

__Do not submit `dist/` files!__ 

The following is done when a pull request is accepted.  There is no need to do any of these steps yourself.

1.  Merge pull request into master
2.  Increment version number in `src/intro.js` and `bower.json`.  Set date in `src/intro.js`.
3.  Build `dist/` files with grunt
4.  Commit and push to github
5.  Add a git tag and release for this version with a short changelog

Sometimes, multiple pull requests will be merged before doing steps 2-5.


Contributing Use-cases
--------------------------

Example workflow based on https://github.com/json-editor/json-editor/issues/180#issuecomment-433689965

- One or more reported issues lead to a wiki page, that discusses the design process for a new major release that covers the issues or improvements.
- The documentation is created before the implementation actually happens.
- After the design process is aggreed on assignment to specific workpackages are documented in the wiki, ...
- New developers that want contribute to the new release can work through the Wiki document and know where some contributions are missing or contribute directly to wiki because they identified already some design problems, that may be an obstacle for applications of the library in the future
- After a major release is finalized the documentation for the release is ready.