TOPCODER EMAIL SERIES - EMAIL SERVER

Dependencies

• nodejs https://nodejs.org/en/ (v6+)
• Heroku Toolbelt https://toolbelt.heroku.com
• git
• PostgreSQL 9.5

Configuration

Configuration for the notification server is at config/default.js. The following parameters can be set in config files or in env variables:

• LOG_LEVEL: the log level
• PORT: the notification server port
• AUTH_SECRET: TC auth secret
• VALID_ISSUERS: TC auth valid issuers
• DATABASE_URL: URI to PostgreSQL database
• DATABASE_OPTIONS: database connection options
• KAFKA_URL: comma separated Kafka hosts
• KAFKA_GROUP_ID: Kafka consumer group id
• KAFKA_CLIENT_CERT: Kafka connection certificate, optional; if not provided, then SSL connection is not used, direct insecure connection is used; if provided, it can be either path to certificate file or certificate content
• KAFKA_CLIENT_CERT_KEY: Kafka connection private key, optional; if not provided, then SSL connection is not used, direct insecure connection is used; if provided, it can be either path to private key file or private key content
• TEMPLATE_MAP: the map between topic and SendGrid template id

Configuration for the connect notification server is at connect/config.js. The following parameters can be set in config files or in env variables:

• TEMPLATE_MAP: the map between topic and SendGrid template id
• SUBJECT_MAP: the map between topic and SendGrid email subject
• EMAIL_FROM: from email to use to send email with SendGrid
• SENDGRID_API_KEY: SendGrid API key

Note that the above two configuration are separate because the common notification server config will be deployed to a NPM package, the connect notification server will use that NPM package, the connection notification server should only use API exposed by the index.js.

TC API Admin Token

An admin token is needed to access TC API. This is already configured Postman notification server API environment TC_ADMIN_TOKEN variable. In case it expires, you may get a new token in this way:

• use Chrome to browse connect.topcoder-dev.com
• open developer tools, click the Network tab
• log in with suser1 / Topcoder123, or mess / appirio123
• once logged in, open some project, for example https://connect.topcoder-dev.com/projects/1936 and in the network inspector look for the call to the project api and get the token from the auth header, see http://pokit.org/get/img/68cdd34f3d205d6d9bd8bddb07bdc216.jpg

Local deployment

• for local development environment you can set variables as following:
  • AUTH_SECRET, VALID_ISSUERS can get from tc-project-service config
  • PORT=4001 because connect-app call this port by default
  • KAFKA_URL, KAFKA_CLIENT_CERT and KAFKA_CLIENT_CERT_KEY get from tc-bus-api readme
• start local PostgreSQL db, create an empty database, update the config/default.js DATABASE_URL param to point to the db
• install dependencies npm i
• run code lint check npm run lint
• start connect notification server npm start
• the app is running at http://localhost:4001, it also starts Kafka consumer to listen for events, send emails using SendGrid and save emails data to database

Heroku deployment

• git init
• git add .
• git commit -m 'message'
• heroku login
• heroku create [application-name] // choose a name, or leave it empty to use generated one
• heroku addons:create heroku-postgresql:hobby-dev
• note that you may need to wait for several minutes before the PostgreSQL database is ready
• optionally, to set some environment variables in heroku, run command like: heroku config:set KAFKA_CLIENT_CERT=path/to/certificate/file heroku config:set KAFKA_CLIENT_CERT_KEY=path/to/private/key/file heroku config:set KAFKA_GROUP_ID=some-group etc.
• git push heroku master // push code to Heroku

Verification

• start the app following above sections
• Import docs/tc-email-server-api-local-env.postman_environment.json and docs/tc-email-server-api.postman_collection.json to Postman
• in Postman, using the email server API collection and environment to run the tests

Swagger

Swagger API definition is provided at docs/swagger_api.yaml, you may check it at http://editor.swagger.io.