Lowcoder frontend

How to contribute

Start a local backend server

Use prebuilt docker image

Simply run the below command to start a backend server.

docker run -d --name lowcoder -p 3000:3000 -v "$PWD/stacks:/lowcoder-stacks" lowcoderorg/lowcoder-ce

For more information, view our docs

Build Docker image from source

1. Check out the source code and change to source dir.
2. Use the command below to build a Docker image :

docker build -f ./deploy/docker/Dockerfile -t lowcoder-dev .

3. Start

docker run -d --name lowcoder-dev -p 3000:3000 -v "$PWD/stacks:/lowcoder-stacks" lowcoder-dev

Start develop

1. Check out source code.
2. Change to /client dir in the source dir.

cd client

3. Run yarn to install dependencies.

yarn install

4. Start dev server:

LOWCODER_API_SERVICE_URL=http://localhost:3000 yarn start

5. After dev server starts successfully, it will be automatically opened in the default browser.

Before submitting a pull request

In addition, before submitting a pull request, please make sure the following is done:

1. If you’ve fixed a bug or added code that should be tested and add unit test suite.
2. Run test and ensure all test suites pass.

yarn test

3. If you add new dependency, use the yarn worspace tool to make sure yarn.lock is also updated.

yarn workspace lowcoder <package name>

Developing and publishung UI components for Lowcoder

1. Initialization

Project initiation

yarn create Lowcoder-plugin <your plugin name>

Go to the project root

cd my-plugin

Start the development environment

yarn start

After executing yarn start, the browser is automatically opened and you enter the component development environment. Please find more information in our docs

2. Export components

To export all the components, use src/index.ts, for example:

import HelloWorldComp from "./HelloWorldComp";

export default {
  hello_world: HelloWorldComp,
};

import HelloWorldComp from "./HelloWorldComp";

3. Publish plugins

When you finish developing and testing the plugin, you can publish it into the npm registry. Login in to the npm registry locally, and then execute the following command:

yarn build --publish

You can check a code demo here: Code Demo on Github

Deployment of the Lowcoder Frontend to Netlify (Local Build Flow)

⚙️ Prerequisites

• Node.js & Yarn installed
• Netlify CLI installed:

npm install -g netlify-cli

• Netlify CLI authenticated:

netlify login

• The project is linked to the correct Netlify site:

cd client
netlify link

---

🛠 Setup netlify.toml (only once)

Inside the client/ folder, create or update netlify.toml:

[build]
  base = "client"
  command = "yarn workspace lowcoder build"
  publish = "client/packages/lowcoder/build"

This ensures Netlify uses the correct build and publish paths when building locally.

---

🚀 Deployment Steps

1️⃣ Navigate into the client folder:

cd client

2️⃣ Run local build (with Netlify environment variables injected):

netlify build

3️⃣ Deploy to production:

netlify deploy --prod --dir=packages/lowcoder/build

---

🔧 Notes

• This local build flow fully honors the environment variables configured in Netlify.
• No build happens on Netlify servers — only the deploy step runs on Netlify.
• This approach avoids Netlify’s build memory limits.