nowdatabase/documentation/functionality/changelog.md

In-app Changelog (GitHub Releases)

The application front page shows a Changelog section that is sourced from GitHub releases in the nowcommunity/nowdatabase repository.

Overview

• Backend route: GET /changelog
• Frontend: frontend/src/components/FrontPage.tsx fetches the route via RTK Query and renders the entries.
• Purpose: show what has been deployed (release title + description + release creation time).

Backend

Route

• backend/src/routes/changelog.ts exposes GET /changelog
• backend/src/services/changelog.ts fetches GitHub releases from the GitHub REST API.

Caching and failure behavior

• The backend keeps an in-memory cache with a TTL (see CACHE_TTL_MS in backend/src/services/changelog.ts).
• If GitHub fetching fails and there is a cached value, the cached value is returned.

Authentication / rate limits

• The service will use process.env.GITHUB_TOKEN (or process.env.GH_TOKEN) if present.
• If no token is provided, unauthenticated GitHub API requests are used and may hit stricter rate limits.

Frontend

• Query is defined in frontend/src/redux/changelogReducer.ts and hits /changelog.
• The front page renders bodyHtml using dangerouslySetInnerHTML.
  • The HTML comes from GitHub’s application/vnd.github.v3.html+json response format.
  • GitHub’s rendered HTML is expected to be sanitized by GitHub; we do not add extra client-side sanitization.

Filtering “internal” notes

The changelog supports a simple mechanism to hide internal-only notes:

• A release is omitted entirely if its title starts with Internal:
• Within a release description, anything after a heading ### Internal is omitted.

How to publish a changelog entry

1. Create a GitHub release in nowcommunity/nowdatabase.
2. Write user-facing notes in the release title/body.
3. Optionally include internal-only notes:
   • Prefix the release title with Internal: to hide the whole release, or
   • Add a ### Internal section at the end of the release body to hide only that section.