For comprehensive self-hosting guides, configuration references, and deployment instructions, visit our FormSG Self-Hosting Guide.

The GitBook documentation is actively maintained and provides:

• Deployment guides for AWS and other platforms
• Configuration reference for all environment variables
• Component customization guides
• Legal and compliance requirements
• Evaluation frameworks for decision makers

Table of Contents

• Contributing

• Features
• Local Development (Docker)

• Testing

• Architecture
• MongoDB Scripts
• Support
• Database Alternatives
• Acknowledgements

Contributing

We welcome all contributions, bug reports, bug fixes, documentation improvements, enhancements, and ideas to code open sourced by the Government Technology Agency of Singapore. Contributors will also be asked to sign a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) to ensure that everybody is free to use their contributions.

IMPORTANT NOTE TO ALL CONTRIBUTORS

Before contributing, please read CONTRIBUTING.md. In particular, we strongly encourage contributors to please first discuss the change you wish to make via GitHub issue, email, or any other method with the repository owners beforehand. Otherwise, we may not be able to review or accept your PR.

Features

FormSG is a form builder application built, open sourced and maintained by the Open Government Products team of the Singapore Government Technology Agency to digitise paper processes.

Notable features include:

• 19 different form field types, including attachments, tables, email and mobile
• Verified email and mobile phone fields via integrations with Twilio and AWS SES
• Automatic emailing of submissions for forms built with Email Mode
• Encryption for data collected on forms built with Storage Mode
• (Singapore government agencies only) Citizen authentication with SingPass
• (Singapore government agencies only) Corporate authentication with CorpPass
• (Singapore government agencies only) Automatic prefill of verified data with MyInfo
• Webhooks functionality via the official FormSG JavaScript SDK (published as @opengovsg/formsg-sdk from packages/sdk) and contributor-supported FormSG Ruby SDK
• Variable amount and Itemised payments on forms with stripe integration

Local Development (Docker)

Prerequisites

Install docker and docker-compose and the node version manager.

First Setup

First, make sure to install and use the node version used by the project:

nvm install
nvm use

To install the relevant packages (frontend, backend, services including pdf-generator and virus-scanner), run the following in the root directory:

pnpm install

If you are on Mac OS X, you may want to allow Docker to use more RAM (minimum of 4GB) by clicking on the Docker icon on the toolbar, clicking on the "Preferences" menu item, then clicking on the "Resources" link on the left.

Running Locally

First, build the frontend for local development:

pnpm -r --filter formsg-frontend... build

Run the following shell commands to build the Docker image. The first time will usually take 10 or so minutes. These commands runs the backend services specified under docker-compose.yml and the React frontend on the native host.

This command runs:

• backend server
• frontend server
• emulated serverless ClamAV (legacy) virus scanner function
• emulated serverless GuardDuty virus scanner function
• emulated serverless pdf generation function

pnpm dev

Alternatively, you can run required components independently - which is what the main dev team usually does:

# Frontend server
pnpm dev:frontend (frontend react server, compulsory)
Backend server
docker compose up
PDF generation function (only needed if you're using features requiring PDF generation, eg, payment invoice/auto-reply PDF)
pnpm dev:pdf-gen
Virus scanners - run both (only needed if you're uploading attachments)
pnpm dev:virus-scanner-guardduty

After the Docker image has finished building, the following local applications can be accessed:

• React application can be accessed at http://localhost:5173
• The backend API server can be accessed at http://localhost:5001
• The development mail server can be accessed at http://localhost:1080

Adding dependencies

Run pnpm add as per usual.

For backend, run

docker-compose up --build --renew-anon-volumes

which will rebuild the backend Docker image and not reuse the existing node_modules volume.

As frontend project is currently not using Docker, no other steps are required.

Accessing email locally

We use MailDev to access emails in the development environment. The MailDev UI can be accessed at http://localhost:1080 when the Docker container runs.

Login using mockpass locally

1. Click on the Login with Singpass button on the login page
2. In the dropdown menu, select S9812379B [MyInfo]
3. Choose the profile with the email [email protected]
4. You should now be successfully logged in

Environment variables

Docker-compose looks at various places for environment variables to inject into the containers. The following is the order of priority:

• Compose file
• Shell environment variables
• Environment file
• Dockerfile

We provide a .env.example file with the secrets blanked out. You can copy and paste the variables described into a self-created .env file, replacing the required values with your own.

Trouble-shooting

For troubleshooting common development issues, refer to the Self-Hosting Guide or create an issue in the repository.

Testing

The docker environment has not been configured to run tests. Thus, you will need to follow the following local build guide to get tests running locally.

Testing Prerequisites

The team uses macOS for development.

Make you sure have the following node version & package manager on your machine:

• "node": ">=22.12.0"
• "pnpm": ">=10.30.3"
• "mongo": ">=4.0.0"
• Python 3.7+ (for LocalStack)

nvm install
nvm use
pnpm install
pip install "localstack[full]"

to install node modules and Localstack locally to be able to run tests. Note that localstack[full] is only compatible with Python 3.7 and above.

Running tests

Unit tests

pnpm test

will build the backend and run our backend unit tests. The tests are located at __tests__/unit/backend.

For CI testing (optimized for continuous integration), you can run

pnpm test:backend:ci

Frontend tests are located at apps/frontend/__tests__. They can be run with

pnpm test:frontend

End-to-end tests

pnpm test:e2e-v2

will build both the frontend and backend then run our end-to-end tests. The tests are located at __tests__/e2e. You will need to stop the Docker dev container to be able to run the end-to-end tests.

If you do not need to rebuild the frontend and backend, you can run

pnpm exec playwright test

Cross-browser testing

This project is tested with BrowserStack.

Architecture

The architecture overview is available in the Self-Hosting Guide.

Support

Please contact FormSG ([email protected]) for any details.

Database Alternatives

FormSG uses MongoDB with Mongoose ODM. While the application can potentially be adapted to work with other databases, this requires significant code changes and is not officially supported.

For detailed guidance on database migration options (including FerretDB, Prisma ORM, CockroachDB, and other alternatives), refer to the Self-Hosting Guide.

Note: Database migrations involve complex changes to the codebase and may require ongoing maintenance. Consider the trade-offs carefully before proceeding.

Acknowledgements

FormSG acknowledges the work done by Arielle Baldwynn to build and maintain TellForm, on which FormSG is based.

Contributions have also been made by: @RyanAngJY @jeantanzy @pregnantboy @namnguyen08 @zioul123 @JoelWee @limli @tankevan