BadgeHub API

Node.js REST service for the BadgeHub

- Development -

Database Migrations

In order to make sure that we can keep track of the database schema, we use db-migrate. This allows us to track the database changes along with git and provide a framework for migrating data and rolling back changes. So when a change to the database schema is needed, a new migration should be created instead of manually changing the database. To create a new migration, follow the steps below.

Create a new migration

npm run db-migrate:create -- <migration-name>

This will create a new migration file in the migrations directory with the name <timestamp>-<migration-name>.js as well as 2 sql files, one for the up migration and one for the down migration.

Fill in the down and up migration sql files with the necessary changes to the database schema.

These sql commands should take care of changing the database schema as well as migrating the data if necessary.

Run the migration to test it.

npm run db-migrate:up

Create updated mockup-data.sql

For the mock data, we always want up to date tables. So if you change something to the database, you should also update the population script and then you should run it from the server:

curl -X POST http://localhost:8081/dev/populate

This script will also automatically update the mockup-data.sql file after completion. Note that this mockup-data.sql is not completely deterministic, so it might not be the same every time you run it. The actual table data should be deterministic though, it's just that the dumping can decide to dump the data in a slightly different order. To keep the determinism of the actual table content after repopulation, we do the following:

• we reset the primary key sequence for each table after clearing the table at the start of the script
• we use mock dates for the created_at and updated_at fields, so that the dates don't change when running the population script twice.

Run the down migration to test it.

npm run db-migrate:down

Commit the migration files to git.

When the code is deployed, the up migrations will be run automatically before starting the server.

Install

Make sure Docker is installed and running.

Before running, copy the .env.example into .env

cp .env.example .env

and fill out the details.

Run

Then start the Docker containers by typing

docker compose up --detach

Then visit http://localhost:8001/ for the development BadgeHub homepage.

Visit http://localhost:8002/ for the pgAdmin interface. Use password badgehub to connect to the BadgeHub database server.

Use the OpenAPI (Swagger) documentation to interact with the REST API.

Development

After setting up the development container, you can start it with

docker compose up --detach

The API should now be accessible through localhost:8001.

And to stop BadgeHub

docker compose down

Or, to stop BadgeHub and delete all volumes (to start fresh)

docker compose down --volumes

Applying commands to only 1 container from the compose file

Container commands like stop, start, restart and logs can also be sent to one of the containers from the compose file. For example

docker compose restart node

will restart the node container only.

Database schema

At the moment, this is the database schema:

BadgeHub Schema

- Production -

In production, use the production docker compose file docker-compose.production.yml. The NODE_ENV environment file is set to production, there's no watcher and PM2 is used to run Node.js multithreaded.

The first time, a Docker container is created. Make sure the dist directory contains the latest build to be copied to the container. Also the public directory and package.json and package-lock.json will be copied.

To start:

docker compose --file docker-compose.production.yml up --detach

Then visit http://localhost:9001/ for the production BadgeHub homepage and http://localhost:9002/ for PG_Admin, the UI for the database.

To wind down:

docker compose --file docker-compose.production.yml down

Tools used

• Express, a framework for Node.js
• tsoa for generating a swagger file from code
• sql-template-tag for more easily writing SQL queries
• db-migrate for database migrations
• tsx for watching TypeScript files in Node.js
• PM2 for managing Node.js processes