Overview

The SRT API is an Express.js Node application that provides a RESTful API for the SRT client. The SRT client and API together deliver the web portal called the Solicitation Review Tool for viewing Section 508 compliance predictions for solicitations submitted from agencies around the federal government while also allowing its users to provide feedback to SRT.

The SRT API runs in a Docker container and accesses solicitations data that is scraped daily from SAM.GOV and stored in a Postgres database housed on cloud.gov. To facilitate development, testing and deployment of this application, this API runs in 3 different instances on cloud.gov - production, staging and development.

A developer on this project will work in a command line environment in any one of several operating systems and use an IDE such as Visual Studio Code. A brief setup guide is outlined below. A developer will also need account access to various environments in order to work on this project: Cloud.gov, SAM.gov, etc. See details below.

Node Package Manager (npm) and yarn are used to install and update Node modules for this project and the security of each of these Node modules is maintained through SNYK.

Developer Requirements

Software Components and Tools

The following is a summary of the software and tools that are needed for development of this project:

• Operating system - Linux, Ubuntu, Mac OS, Windows
• IDE - Visual Studio Code, etc.
• Docker
• PostGres
• SNYK
• GitHub
• Node

Systems Access

Access to the following platforms will also be required for development:

• Cloud.gov
• SAM.gov
• MAX.gov
• Docker.com and hub.docker.com
• SNYK.io
• GitHub - GSA team

Environment Variables

There are a few environment variables that control the configuration or set security sensitive keys. On cloud.gov any variables you would like to configure manually can be changed using the cloud.gov control panel or CLI.

• NODE_ENV - This should be set based on the environment. It is used to switch between the available environments. Examples include production, cloudstage, clouddev, circle, development. The definitive list can be found by reading config.js.
• VCAP_SERVICES - cloud.gov will automatically set this environment variable. It contains connection information for the specific postgres database for that environment - and also any other cloud.gov services or connections that may be configured in the future.

Setup and Deployment

Getting Started

• To get started with SRT-API, go to GSA/srt-api to copy the URL for cloning the project.
• Open Terminal or use Visual Studio Code and open a terminal window.
• Navigate to the desired folder and clone the project.

Installation

• Navigate to the bin folder that was created through the clone.
• Type ./dev_setup.sh to begin installation.
• Note - If this script fails during execution, please refer to the manual setup guide for installing the necessary tools and packages here: Manual Setup Guide.
• This script will install and set up much of what you need for this project:
  • Node Package Manager (npm)
  • Postgres
  • Node Version Manager (nvm)
  • SNYK - log into SNYK using your GitHub account when prompted by the script
• This script will also create the needed local Postgres database with all of the tables required by this project, if they do not already exist.
• It will also install Node Version 16, which is the requirement for this project.
• This script will then install and update all of the required Node modules.

Running and Configuration

The npm run dev command will start the server. Database configuration options are read from server/dbConfig/dbConfig.js and general configuration from server/config/config.js file. dbConfig.json holds the configuration for every environment the app my be run in and the specific configuration for this run is chosen based on the NODE_ENV environment variable.

Database connection information is stored in the dbConfig.js file but will be overridden by any settings in the VCAP_SERVICES environment variable. This feature allows cloud.gov to inject the proper database connection information upon startup.

Deployment

Docker Build

First we need to build the docker image for the srt-api, and the process for dev/staging is slightly different than production:

Staging/Dev

docker build . -t <docker_username>/srt-api:<release_version>-<dev/staging> --build-arg SNYK_TOKEN=<SNYK_TOKEN>

Production

docker build . -t <docker_username>/srt-api:<release_version>-prod --build-arg SNYK_TOKEN=<SNYK_TOKEN> --build-arg environment=production

SNYK_TOKEN is the AUTH Token provided by snyk to authorize its use. If you need help finding the AUTH token, utilize this documentation

Docker Push

This will push the built image to the docker hub user indicated in <docker_username>

docker push <docker_username>/srt-api:<release_version>-<env>

CF Push

Finally to deploy to cloud.gov, we need to utilize the cf cli to push the docker image app into the cloud.gov application droplet.

cf target -s <env>
cf push srt-api-<env> -f cf/manifest.<env>.yml --docker-image <docker_username>/srt-api:<release_version>-<env>

More Info

For more detailed information, please refer to the documentation here: Documentation