When making a contribution to the BDFRx project, please open an issue beforehand so that the maintainers can weigh in on it. This helps create a trail on GitHub and keeps things organised.
Please don't open an issue on GitHub unless you are reporting a bug or proposing a feature. For questions, there is a discussion tab on the repository's GitHub page where you can interact with the developers and ask questions. If you believe that something is a bug, or that a feature should be added, then by all means open an issue.
All communication on GitHub, Discord, email, or any other medium must conform to the Code of Conduct. It's not that hard to stay respectful.
Before opening a new issue, be sure that no issues regarding your problem already exist. If a similar issue exists, try to contribute to the issue.
If you are asking a question about the functioning of BDFRx or the interface, please use the discussions page. Bug reports are not the right medium for asking and answering questions, and the discussions page makes it much easier to discuss, answer, and save questions and responses for others going forwards.
If you would like to test the newest updates to see if your bug has been fixed or you want to run on the bleeding edge you can install directly from Github with one of the following commands (pipx is preferred)
pipx install git+https://github.com/OMEGARAZER/bulk-downloader-for-reddit-x.git
pip install git+https://github.com/OMEGARAZER/bulk-downloader-for-reddit-x.git
When opening an issue about a bug, please provide the full log file for the run in which the bug occurred. This log file is named log_output.txt
in the configuration folder. Check the README for information on where this is. This log file will contain all the information required for the developers to recreate the bug.
If you do not have or cannot find the log file, then at minimum please provide the Reddit ID for the submission or comment which caused the issue. Also copy in the command that you used to run BDFRx from the command line, as that will also provide helpful information when trying to find and fix the bug. If needed, more information will be asked in the thread of the bug.
Adding this information is not optional. If a bug report is opened without this information, it cannot be replicated by developers. The logs will be asked for once and if they are not supplied, the issue will be closed due to lack of information.
In the case of requesting a feature or an enhancement, there are fewer requirements. However, please be clear in what you would like BDFRx to do and also how the feature/enhancement would be used or would be useful to more people. It is crucial that the feature is justified. Any feature request without a concrete reason for it to be implemented has a very small chance to get accepted. Be aware that proposed enhancements may be rejected for multiple reasons, or no reason, at the discretion of the developers.
Before creating a pull request (PR), check out ARCHITECTURE for a short introduction to the way that BDFRx is coded and how the code is organised. Also read the Style Guide section below before actually writing any code.
Once you have done both of these, the below list shows the path that should be followed when writing a PR.
- If an issue does not already exist, open one that will relate to the PR.
- Ensure that any changes fit into the architecture specified above.
- Ensure that you have written tests that cover the new code.
- Ensure that no existing tests fail, unless there is a good reason for them to do so.
- If needed, update any documentation with changes.
- Open a pull request that references the relevant issue.
- Expect changes or suggestions and heed the Code of Conduct. We're all volunteers here.
Someone will review your pull request as soon as possible, but remember that all maintainers are volunteers and this won't happen immediately. Once it is approved, congratulations! Your code is now part of BDFRx.
Bulk Downloader for Reddit x requires Python 3.9 at minimum. First, ensure that your Python installation satisfies this.
BDFRx is built in a way that it can be packaged and installed via pip
. This places BDFRx next to other Python packages and enables you to run the program from any directory. Since it is managed by pip, you can also uninstall it.
To install the program, clone the repository and run pip inside the project's root directory:
git clone https://github.com/OMEGARAZER/bulk-downloader-for-reddit-x.git
cd ./bulk-downloader-for-reddit-x
python3 -m pip install -e .
-e
parameter creates a link to that folder. That is, any change inside the folder affects the package immidiately. So, when developing, you can be sure that the package is not stale and Python is always running your latest changes. (Due to this linking, moving/removing/renaming the folder might break it)
Then, you can run the program from anywhere in your disk as such:
bdfrx
There are additional Python packages that are required to develop BDFRx. These can be installed with the following command:
python3 -m pip install -e .[dev]
pre-commit install
The BDFRx project uses several tools to manage the code of the project. These include:
The first three tools are formatters. These change the code to the standards expected for the BDFRx project. The configuration details for these tools are contained in the pyproject.toml file for the project.
The tool pre-commit
runs the three formatting tools automatically when a commit is made. This is to ensure that all code submitted for this project is formatted acceptably. Note that any PR that does not follow the formatting guide will not be accepted. For information on how to use pre-commit to avoid this, see the pre-commit documentation.
BDFRx uses the Black formatting standard and enforces this with the tool by the same name.
See Preparing the Environment for Development for how to setup these tools to run automatically.
There are a lot of tests in BDFRx. This is one of the strengths of BDFRx in that it is fully tested. The codebase uses the package pytest to create the tests, which is a third-party package that provides many functions and objects useful for testing Python code.
When submitting a PR, it is required that you run all possible tests to ensure that any new commits haven't broken anything. Otherwise, while writing the request, it can be helpful (and much quicker) to run only a subset of the tests.
This is accomplished with marks, a system that pytest uses to categorise tests. The current marks in use by the BDFRx test suite are:
slow
- This marks a test that may take a long time to complete
- Usually marks a test that downloads many submissions or downloads a particularly large resource
online
- This marks a test that requires an internet connection and uses online resources
reddit
- This marks a test that accesses Reddit specifically
authenticated
- This marks a test that requires a test configuration file with a valid OAuth2 token
These tests can be run either all at once, or excluding certain marks. The tests that require online resources, such as those marked reddit
or online
, will naturally require more time to run than tests that are entirely offline. To run tests, you must be in the root directory of the project and can use the following command.
pytest
To exclude one or more marks, the following command can be used, substituting the unwanted mark.
pytest -m "not online"
pytest -m "not reddit and not authenticated"
There should be configuration file test_config.cfg
in the project's root directory to be able to run the integration tests with reddit authentication. See how to create such files here. The easiest way of creating this file is copying your existing default_config.cfg
file from the path stated in the previous link and renaming it to test_config.cfg
Be sure that user_token key exists in test_config.cfg.
For more details, review the pytest documentation that is freely available online.
Many IDEs also provide integrated functionality to run and display the results from tests, and almost all of them support pytest in some capacity. This would be the recommended method due to the additional debugging and general capabilities.
When writing tests, ensure that they follow the style guide. BDFRx uses pytest to run tests. Wherever possible, parameterise tests, even if you only have one test case. This makes it easier to expand in the future, as the ultimate goal is to have multiple test cases for every test, instead of just one.
If required, use of mocks is expected to simplify tests and reduce the resources or complexity required. Tests should be as small as possible and test as small a part of the code as possible. Comprehensive or integration tests are run with the click
framework and are located in their own file.
It is also expected that new tests be classified correctly with the marks described above i.e. if a test accesses Reddit through a reddit_instance
object, it must be given the reddit
mark. If it requires an authenticated Reddit instance, then it must have the authenticated
mark.