Goro

What is Goro?

Goro is a “content production system” used to build all sites that live directly on the Google top-level domain (e.g. https://www.google.es/activate).

At its core, Goro is a web application that runs on Google App Engine and provides a set of tools and processes to site owners in order to cut down the time it takes to produce a high-quality web site.

Learning Resources

If you cannot access any of these learning resources, Goro itself or even the Johnny Cage repository then you will need to contact your projects ATL and request access.

General

• What’s The Deal With Goro?
• Agency Guide: Goro
• High-level Guidelines

Development

• Johnny Cage repository
• First Time Developer Guide
• Goro Help Centre
• Viewing & Editing Files
• Using AngularJS in Goro
• Template Context Variables
• Template Tags
• Using Custom Formbox Forms

Linting / Styling

• Brand Studio: Agency Code Review Checklist
• Template style guide
• HTML/CSS style guide
• JavaScript style guide
• AngularJS style guide

Coding Standards

Projects being built through Goro need to adhere to Google’s linting rules. There are various different style guides and standards across different languages. Check out the linting section of the learning resources for more specifics.

To lint JavaScript files you can use the “Linter Tool” while editing a file on Goro. Note that this will not catch AngularJS formatting rules, only plain JavaScript rules. The tool is located next to the “Actions” and “Preview” buttons. There is also a command-line linter known as gjslint that can be run with corresponding rulesets. This local linting will speed up development overall as you’ll not have to deploy files to lint them.

Workflow

Creating and authoring project files can be done entirely through the Goro web application, however this has many disadvantages:

• You need an active internet connection to be able to develop.
• To ensure your JS files lint you’d need to open each one manually and check.
• Goro doesn’t have real file source control and has a limited history stack.
• The project will have access to only one “branch” and preview area. If there are multiple developers on the project you’ll quickly tread on each other’s toes.

To combat the majority of these errors we can use a local development server for Goro known as Johnny Cage. Utilising this tool allows us to develop locally for speed and use our own local build tools such as Grunt or Gulp for things such as file uploading and linting.

Developing locally will also allow us to use our own project git repository. Doing this lets us treat the Goro branch as a preview environment and a tool for exporting files.

Command-line Tool

Goro has a CLI that can be installed locally. There is documentation that will help you get it installed on Mac / Linux. The CLI lets you upload files to Goro in bulk rather than uploading folders through the Goro web application.

There is an additional “tip” in the documentation which shows you how to alias goro, however, their method listed will only work for your current terminal session if you’re on anything other than a mac.

NOTE: If you are installing the CLI tool, it only works with versions of keyring lower than or equal to 8.4.0. At this time you’ll need to update the relevant line in the requirements.txt of the CLI vendor download.

If you try to run goro from any folder and it fails then you will need to create your own command. Below is an example goro command that can be placed into any of your bin folders (~/bin, /usr/local/bin) e.g. /usr/local/bin/goro:

#! /bin/bash
python /path/to/your/goro/folder/goro.py "$@"

You may need to restart your terminal for changes to take effect. To test things work as intended, simply try to run goro from any folder.