Stela: A Monolithic Typescript Backend for Permanent.org

Documentation

Historically, documentation of this repo's API server was kept in https://github.com/PermanentOrg/stela/blob/main/API.md. We are now adopting the OpenAPI specification format for API documentation; new endpoints are documented in this fashion. To generate an HTML copy of the OpenAPI documentation, run

redocly build-docs packages/api/docs/present/api.yaml

Then open redoc-static.html to view the docs in browser.

Setup

1. Create a .env file

cp .env.template .env

Update values as needed (see Environment Variables.

2. Install Node.js version 18 (doing this using nvm is recommended).

3. Install dependencies

npm install
npm install -ws

4. psql needs to be installed for running tests

Environment Variables

Depending on the work being done, some environment variable will not be required for the service to run. For these, simply fill in any fake value to prevent require-env-variable from throwing errors.

Variable	Default	Notes
ENV	local	Tells stela what environment it's running in
DATABASE_URL	postgres://postgres:permanent@database:5432/permanent	Run tests to generate default database
PORT	8080	Tells stela what port to run on
FUSIONAUTH_HOST	<none. needs to be set>	Fusionauth's host URL. Should be different between prod and other envs.
FUSIONAUTH_API_KEY	<none. needs to be set>	Find it in Fusionauth admin panel -> settings -> API keys -> the one called "back-end (local)"
FUSIONAUTH_TENANT	<none. needs to be set>	Find it in Fusionauth admin panel -> Tenants -> the one called "Local"
FUSIONAUTH_BACKEND_APPLICATION_ID	<none. needs to be set>	Find it in Fusionauth admin panel -> Applications -> the one called "back-end (local)"
FUSIONAUTH_ADMIN_APPLICATION_ID	<none. needs to be set>	Find it in Fusionauth admin panel -> Applications -> the one called "admin-local"
LEGACY_BACKEND_HOST_URL	http://load_balancer:80/api
LEGACY_BACKEND_SHARED_SECRET	none	Can be found in back-end's library/base/constants/base.constants.php
MAILCHIMP_API_KEY	none	Can be found in back-end's library/base/constants/base.constants.php
MAILCHIMP_TRANSACTIONAL_API_KEY	none	Can be found in back-end's library/base/constants/base.constants.php, where it is called MANDRILL_API_KEY
MAILCHIMP_DATACENTER	us12
MAILCHIMP_COMMUNITY_LIST_ID	2736f796db	The default value corresponds to the dev list
SENTRY_DSN	none	Can be found in Sentry under Projects > stela > Settings > Client Keys (DSN)
DEV_NAME	none	Only set in local environments. Should be your given name. all lowercase. Used to create Sentry envs for developers
AWS_REGION	us-west-2
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID	none	The same one you use in devenv
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY	none	The same one you use in devenv
LOW_PRIORITY_TOPIC_ARN	test	Doesn't need to be set to a real ARN unless your work touches it specifically
MIXPANEL_TOKEN	none	Found in Mixpanel at Settings > Project Settings > Project Token
ARCHIVEMATICA_BASE_URL	none	It is the url of the EC2 instance on which archivematica is running
ARCHIVEMATICA_API_KEY	none	Found in Bitwarden, not needed unless you're running the cleanup cron
CLOUDFRONT_URL	none	Can be found as CDN_URL in back-end's library/base/constants/base.constants.php. Not required for API server
CLOUDFRONT_KEY_PAIR_ID	none	Can be found as CLOUDFRONT_KEYPAIR in back-end's library/base/constants/base.constants.php. Not required for API server
CLOUDFRONT_PRIVATE_KEY	none	Can be found in back-end's library/static/certs/pk-APKAJP2D34UGZ6IG443Q.pem. Not required for API server

Linting

Run

npm run lint -ws

Testing

Make sure the local database from devenv's docker compose is running

docker compose up -d

then run tests with

npm run test -ws

or, for a single project, specify the workspace

npm run test -w @stela/api

Note that the database tests run against is dropped and recreated at the beginning of each test run.

For running tests on a single file in stela, you can make an adjustment to the existing test command in packages/api/package.json on your machine. See the example below (replace src/middleware/authentication.test.ts with a pattern to match your file):

    "test:file": "npm run start-containers && npm run clear-database && npm run create-database && npm run set-up-database && (cd ../..; docker compose run stela node --experimental-vm-modules ../../node_modules/jest/bin/jest.js -i --silent=false -- src/middleware/authentication.test.ts)",

Running the API Server Locally

Preferred method: From the devenv repo, run

docker compose up -d

or if you've added or updated dependencies, run

docker compose up -d --build stela

Outside a container: Run

npm run start -w @stela/api

Running Lambdas Locally

1. Build the lambda image

docker build --platform linux/amd64 -t <LAMBDA NAME>:test -f Dockerfile.<LAMBDA NAME> .

2. Run the lambda container. Add additional --env arguments as needed. Note that the CLOUDFRONT_PRIVATE_KEY required by the record_thumbnail_attacher must include literal newlines; docker does not appear to interpret \n correctly.

docker run --platform linux/amd64 -p 9001:8080 --env DATABASE_URL=postgres://postgres:permanent@database:5432/permanent <LAMBDA NAME>:test

3. Find the container name

docker ps

4. Connect to the local env docker network

docker network connect devenv_default <YOUR CONTAINER NAME>

5. Trigger the lambda

curl "http://localhost:9001/2015-03-31/functions/function/invocations" -d '<YOUR PAYLOAD>'

Deployment

To dev

stela deploys to dev automatically upon any merge to main.

Beyond dev

To deploy to staging and prod, create a Release with a tag of the form vX.X.X (this should conform to semantic versioning). This will trigger a deploy to staging. If that is successful, the workflow will pause and wait for manual approval to deploy to prod. Given manual approval, it will deploy to prod.

To staging Only

To deploy to staging without deploying to prod, run the "Deploy to staging" workflow from the Actions tab.

Updating Test Cluster Infrastructure

Because dev and staging run on the same EKS cluster, deploys to each of these environments just target the stela deployments and won't update the underlying infrastructure they run on. To update that infrastructure, manually trigger the "Deploy to all test envs" workflow from the Actions tab in Github. This will deploy the current main branch to dev and staging in addition to updating the test cluster infrastructure.