UI in development mode defaults to using fake generated data, but you can configure it to proxy a live running nomad process by setting `USE_MIRAGE` environment variable to `false`. First, make sure nomad is running. The UI, in development mode, runs independently from Nomad, so this could be an official release or a dev branch. Likewise, Nomad can be running in server mode or dev mode. As long as the API is accessible, the UI will work as expected.
The fake data in development is generated from a stable seed of 1. To generate different data, you can include a query parameter of `?faker-seed=2` or any other number in the URL. To turn off the seed and get different data with every load, use `?faker=seed=0`.
All necessary tools for UI development are installed as part of the Vagrantfile. This is primarily to make it easy to build the UI from source while working on Nomad. Due to the filesystem requirements of [Broccoli](http://broccolijs.com/) (which powers Ember CLI), it is strongly discouraged to use Vagrant for developing changes to the UI.
That said, development with Vagrant is still possible, but the `ember serve` command requires two modifications:
*`--watch polling`: This allows the vm to notice file changes made in the host environment.
*`--port 4201`: The default port 4200 is not forwarded, since local development is recommended.
This makes the full command for running the UI in development mode in Vagrant:
```
$ ember serve --watch polling --port 4201
```
### Running Tests
Nomad UI tests can be run independently of Nomad golang tests.
*`ember test` (single run, headless browser)
*`ember test --server` (watches for changes, runs in a full browser)
In the test environment, the fake data is generated with a random seed. If you want stable data, you can set a seed while running the test server by appending `&faker-seed=1` (or any other non-zero number) to the URL.
Typically `make release` or `make dev-ui` will be the desired build workflow, but in the event that build artifacts need to be inspected, `ember build` will output compiled files in `ui/dist`.
The Storybook project provides a browser to see what components and patterns are present in the application and how to use them. You can run it locally with `yarn storybook` after you have `ember serve` running. The latest version from the `master` branch is at [`nomad-storybook.netlify.com`](https://nomad-storybook.netlify.com/).
By default (according to the `.ember-cli` file), a proxy address of `http://localhost:4646` is used. If you are running Nomad at a different address, you will need to override this setting when running ember serve: `ember serve --proxy http://newlocation:1111`.
Also, ensure that `USE_MIRAGE` environment variable is set to false, so the UI proxy requests to Nomad process instead of using autogenerated test data.
#### Nomad is running in Vagrant, but I can't access the API from my host machine
Nomad binds to `127.0.0.1:4646` by default, which is the loopback address. Try running nomad bound to `0.0.0.0`: `bin/nomad -bind 0.0.0.0`.
Ports also need to be forwarded in the Vagrantfile. 4646 is already forwarded, but if a port other than the default is being used, that port needs to be added to the Vagrantfile and `vagrant reload` needs to be run.
