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Build and Deployment

The frontend is designed as a standard browser-based SPA build served by Nginx.

Production build​

Build the app with:

pnpm build

This produces static assets in dist.

Docker image​

The repository includes a two-stage Dockerfile.

Build stage​

  • base image: guergeiro/pnpm:lts-latest-alpine
  • working directory: /build
  • installs openjdk21
  • runs pnpm i and pnpm build

The Java runtime is needed because the project uses OpenAPI Generator during dependency installation or regeneration.

Runtime stage​

  • base image: nginx:stable-alpine
  • clears the default Nginx web root
  • copies deployment/default.conf
  • copies the built dist assets into /usr/share/nginx/html
  • exposes port 80

Nginx routing behavior​

The shipped Nginx config is set up for an SPA with hashed assets:

  • /assets/ files are served directly and cached for a long time
  • /index.html is kept non-cached so new deployments pick up new hashed assets quickly
  • all other unmatched paths fall back to /index.html

That fallback is required because the app uses BrowserRouter and expects client-side routes such as /browse, /compare, and /auth/callback to resolve correctly after a page refresh.

Security headers in the Nginx config​

The provided config adds headers such as:

  • Strict-Transport-Security
  • Content-Security-Policy
  • Referrer-Policy
  • X-Frame-Options
  • X-Content-Type-Options
  • Permissions-Policy

If you change hosting behavior, keep those headers or replace them with equivalents.

Deployment checklist​

  1. Set the correct VITE_API_BASE_URL and OIDC variables before building.
  2. Make sure the OIDC provider allows the deployed callback and logout URLs.
  3. Confirm the backend CORS configuration includes the deployed frontend origin.
  4. Serve the frontend with SPA fallback routing.
  5. Verify /auth/callback and /auth/silent-callback work in the deployed environment.

Regenerating the API client in CI or image builds​

Because the project generates the OpenAPI client as part of installation, your build environment should either:

  • allow access to the hosted backend spec, or
  • have the local backend spec available for the fallback generation path

If that is not possible in a deployment environment, you may want to commit generated client output or adjust the install/generation workflow accordingly.