Mercurial and Retool: Complete Integration Guide 2024

 

Integrating Retool with Mercurial

 

Integrating Retool with Mercurial can enhance your development workflow by allowing you to manage Mercurial repositories alongside your Retool applications. Below is a step-by-step guide on how to achieve this integration.

 

Prerequisites

 

• Ensure you have an active Retool account and access to create apps within it.
• Install Mercurial on your local development machine and configure it with your existing repositories.
• Basic knowledge of Retool's interface and Mercurial's version control commands is required.
• Have access to a server where your Mercurial repositories are hosted, if applicable.

 

Setting Up Mercurial Repository

 

• Open your terminal or command line interface on your local machine.
• If you haven't initialized a Mercurial repository yet, navigate to the project directory and run: hg init.
• Ensure that your repository has a HTTP(S) or SSH URL accessible for Retool to connect.
• Set up authentication if your repository requires it. This can be done by configuring the .hg/hgrc file or utilizing an SSH key.

 

Enabling Mercurial HTTP(S) Access

 

• To expose your Mercurial repository over HTTP(S), you can use a lightweight HTTP server like hg serve or set up a more robust server using Apache with mod_wsgi.
• Configure your web server accordingly. For Apache, ensure that required modules for CGI execution are active, and set your DocumentRoot path to the Mercurial repository directory.
• To start a simple HTTP server with Mercurial, use: hg serve --webdir-conf hgweb.config, replacing hgweb.config with your specific configuration.

 

Configuring Retool API Integration

 

• Log in to your Retool account and navigate to the "Resources" tab.
• Click on "Create new" and choose "REST API" since Mercurial does not natively support direct integration, but can be accessed via HTTP(S) calls.
• Configure the REST API with the base URL pointing to your Mercurial server's address, like http://your-server-address/mercurial-repo.
• Set authentication by choosing basic auth and providing username and password, or secure with API key depending on how you've secured your HTTP access.

 

Pulling Data from Mercurial into Retool

 

• In Retool, create a new app or open your existing app where you wish to integrate Mercurial data.
• Utilize the "Query" feature by clicking "New Query," selecting your configured REST API resource.
• Input your desired command using the REST API, for example, to pull commit logs you might query: GET /api/log.
• Test and run your query to ensure it can pull data from Mercurial.

 

Displaying Mercurial Data in Retool

 

• Add UI components such as tables, lists, or charts to your app to visualize your Mercurial data.
• Bind data from your query to these components. For example, link commit messages and timestamps to list items in a table.
• Use Retool's rich set of transformation tools to process and filter the data as needed. You can perform operations like filtering commits by author, date, or message content.

 

Testing and Validation

 

• Thoroughly test the Retool application to ensure it accurately reflects the data from your Mercurial repository.
• Check for any possible issues with data retrieval, especially related to network connectivity or authentication problems.
• Validate that commands execute correctly and that data updates are without latency and errors.

 

Deploying Your Integrated App

 

• Once your app is tested and everything works as expected, you can publish it for other users in your organization.
• Make sure to set appropriate permissions for who can view, edit, or run the application.
• Monitor the application's performance and iterate on any user feedback to improve the integration.

 

By methodically following these steps, you can effectively integrate Retool with Mercurial, allowing you to make agile and informed development decisions based on your version control data.