hashnode-preview

A preview service for freeCodeCamp.org news for posts on Hashnode (headless) CMS.

This uses Hashnode's GraphQL API and Nunjucks to render an approximate preview of a post as it will appear when published live on /news.

Environment variables

Copy .env.sample to .env and fill in the values:

Variable	Description
PORT	Port the server listens on (defaults to 3000).
HASHNODE_HOST	The publication host from the Hashnode dashboard (e.g. fcc.hashnode.dev).
HASHNODE_TOKEN	A Hashnode personal access token. Required to preview drafts — Hashnode's draft query is authenticated and returns UNAUTHENTICATED without it. Published posts work without a token.

Note

A personal access token is tied to the account that created it and can expire or be revoked. If draft previews start failing with an UNAUTHENTICATED error, regenerate the token and update HASHNODE_TOKEN.

For the production app, the token is kept in the team password manager and set as an encrypted environment variable in the DigitalOcean App Platform settings. Update it in both places when rotating.

Development

Warning

Please note that changes to the nunjucks templates will not be reflected in the watch mode.

pnpm install
pnpm run start

Deployment

• The app is deployed on DigitalOcean App Platform, and all changes merged to the main branch are deployed using the deploy.yml workflow.

• Alternatively, you can run the app using the included docker-compose.yml file.

  docker compose build
  docker compose up -d