Hello. These days I have been trying to build an app following their documentation. (Context: I don’t know building apps.) Unfortunately, I didn’t make it. I ran into never-ending errors. Graphql API server up but not able to interact with it as described, Expo go unable to connect to the local development server… So I checked and checked and searched around to make sure that I did comprehend the steps right, until I saw the issues page of the project on Github, realizing that this project may have been not under maintenance since Oct 2021. Unlike before knowing this, I feel so hopeless in front of those errors now.
I wonder if there’s still anyone here at Meta having a Lexicon app running? Maybe there exist some issues in Lexicon causing errors? Or if there’s no problem in Lexicon and somebody’s having it running perfectly, could you share some thoughts on how did you make it work? Is there something that may be not well explained in their documentation that I should pay attention to?
I find topics about Lexicon are quite bizarrely rare on meta by the way. (why? Lexicon seems to be an excellent solution for those who want an app for their discourse site.
Yes… so the post you are replying to was actually a separate topic merged into here by a moderator, forcing this topic to be open again. I was wondering why there were quite few new topics on Lexicon other than this one.
But thanks to your reply I discover that there are new replies to this topic! Glad to see that people are gathering around here again. It seems that the developer is back with more detailed guide, I’m gonna try setting up the app again.
If you don’t have experience building apps (in particular with React Native), it is more likely that you will encounter further difficulty understanding the project, its documentation, how to setup it up correctly, and how to deploy your own Lexicon-powered mobile app.
It is recommended you consult with someone that has familiarity with React Native, Expo, and general experience in NodeJS, as well as actually deploying apps to the App and Play Stores.
Also having a solid understanding of how .env files and environment variables work is vital to building and deploying this project on your own.
Without that, at best, you may be able to get it working locally. But trying to deploy it yourself without past technical experience may prove to be a frustrating experience without outside support.
Thanks for your suggestion. I did consider consulting someone professional for help, but my budget wouldn’t be sufficient, because I’m running a community without sources of revenue yet. I feel confident about understanding the project after reading several tens of times the documentation. And it’s supposed to be able to have an app working following the tutorial?
By the way, could you help me with this? Would appreciate it a lot. I just encountered the error when executing yarn generate. (in Windows Powershell, nodejs v.16.16.0) I haven’t seen anyone having the same problem yet. Could this be caused by the version of nodejs? I saw in the tutorial that “For now, it is recommended that you perform this tutorial using a version of Node between 12 and 14.” But I assume that Expo has supported the new version…
PS C:\Users\kuro\Documents\GitHub\lexicon> yarn generate
yarn run v1.22.19
$ yarn --cwd api generate && yarn --cwd frontend graphql:generate
$ yarn generate:schema
$ env SKIP_VALIDATION=true ts-node --transpile-only src/schema.ts
'env' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
error Command failed with exit code 1.
info Visit https://yarnpkg.com/en/docs/cli/run for documentation about this command.
error Command failed with exit code 1.
info Visit https://yarnpkg.com/en/docs/cli/run for documentation about this command.
error Command failed with exit code 1.
info Visit https://yarnpkg.com/en/docs/cli/run for documentation about this command.
Yes, it looks like your system is not on the right version of Node and / or Expo, so you would need to ensure that you are according to what it specifies.
In an effort to keep this thread clean, and to centralize issues / troubleshooting to one location, please see the above post for filing issues.
The issues that user encountered appear to have stemmed from unfamiliarity with the project and its tooling (Node, Expo, React native) and not following the documentation / quick start guide:
Error messages indicating that files from the generated/ path cannot be found means that you did not run yarn generate as outlined in the instructions:
An invalid MOBILE_PROSE_HOST (as depicted in that screenshot) already contains the solution in the error message.
As it says, “MOBILE_PROSE_HOST must start with http:// or https://”.
This means the user either didn’t configure the frontend/.env at all, or did not follow the documentation / error message above to ensure that the host starts with http:// or https://
Hello there, first of all, it’s really great that this app exists @RyanKF
I managed to set up the app on Expo, but I had an issue with the current repository on GitHub. The app couldn’t be used with Expo Go because Expo SDK 45 is no longer supported.
So, I used the pull request from shafique17z, which updated the app to Expo SDK 46/47, and that allowed me to run the app on Expo Go. However, when I ran “npm test” in the project root directory, I encountered several errors that I couldn’t resolve. As a result, there are no images in the app, and there are some peer dependencies that are not resolved.
It’s good to see more activity on the open-source repository lately.
Is this project still active?
Yes, it is still actively under development, working toward a major release.
Due to recent activity and interest, we may consider an interim release (perhaps on a separate branch) to address some of the issues like this sooner than the full release.
However, when I ran “npm test” in the project root directory, I encountered several errors that I couldn’t resolve. As a result, there are no images in the app, and there are some peer dependencies that are not resolved.
For future reference, we can’t make any guarantees about an external PR that hasn’t yet been approved by our review process.
Having said that, thanks for taking the time to test out that user’s PR and pass along the info about what was breaking—ideally that user can address those issues soon.
I see you’re already participating in that PR on Github, so let’s keep all discussions on these topics over there going forward.
Hey all, I just wanted to follow up here briefly and mention that we recently launched version 2 of Lexicon, which now includes support for push notifications and email deep linking!
Thanks for pointing that out @Moin, that’s exactly the right place to look.
We also just freshly cut a release of 2.1.0 on Friday, and will be updating that documentation page this coming week, since there are some additional features included.
@matenauta, thanks for your feedback, we appreciate it!
Lexicon is a mobile app template, so you would use it to create a mobile app for your site so that your users can browse your site from a native mobile app.
If you encounter a bug, please fill out the template on our Issue Tracker or post a question on the Discussions Tab on GitHub. Before doing this, please make sure you give the documentation site a thorough read. Many questions and issues that people have encountered can be resolved by reading that first.
The documentation should help you to understand the context and background of the project, how to get a quick start example working locally, and how to actually take the app to production and publish to the App Store and Google Play Store. Additionally, it includes instructions for installing our custom Discourse plugin to enable push notifications and email deep linking.
I haven’t seen anyone having the same problem yet. Could this be caused by the version of nodejs? I saw in the tutorial that “For now, it is recommended that you perform this tutorial using a version of Node between 12 and 14.” But I assume that Expo has supported the new version…
In an effort to keep this thread clean, and to centralize issues / troubleshooting to one location, please see the above post for filing issues.
