FileVault

FileVault is a monorepo, web application designed to securely manage and store files using Azure Blob Storage. It provides functionalities for uploading, listing, and deleting files stored in the cloud.

Features

• Upload Files: Easily upload files with associated metadata (name and key) to Azure Blob Storage.
• List Files: View a list of all uploaded files with their metadata.
• Delete Files: Remove files from Azure Blob Storage while updating the file list.

Technologies Used

• Node.js: Backend server environment.
• Express.js: Web framework for Node.js used to handle HTTP requests.
• Azure Storage Blob SDK: SDK for interacting with Azure Blob Storage.
• React: Frontend library for building user interfaces.
• Multer: Middleware for handling multipart/form-data, used for file uploads.
• dotenv: Module for loading environment variables from a .env file.
• cors: Middleware for enabling CORS (Cross-Origin Resource Sharing) in Express.

Prerequisites

Before running the application, ensure you have the following installed:

• Node.js (recommended version)
• npm or yarn
• Azure Storage Account (for using Azure Blob Storage)

Getting Started

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/your-username/filevault.git
   cd filevault

2. Install dependencies

   npm install   # or `yarn install`

3. Set up environment variables

   .env is needed in ths server folder and client folder:

   # /server
   PORT=4000  # Port number for the server
   AZURE_STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME=<your-azure-storage-account-name>
   AZURE_STORAGE_ACCOUNT_KEY=<your-azure-storage-account-key>
   AZURE_CONTAINER_NAME=<your-container-name>
   
   # /client
   # The base url should be changed when deployed. For now, it's hardcoded as localhost
   # REACT_APP_API_BASE_URL=https://your-production-api-url
   PORT=3000
   REACT_APP_API_PORT=4000
   

4. Start the server

   The app is launched via concurrently in the root package.json

   In the root, run the following command to launch the server and client (the app):

   npm run start

Starting with Docker

• There are 3 docker images:
  • Server - NodeJS/TS API
  • Client - ReactTS client
  • Jenkins - for running Jenkins pipeline locally/on CI

Build the containers with the following command from the root folder:

# enter command in the root folder
docker-compose up --build

To access Jenkins, you would need to follow some setup. See their official docs [ linux | mac ].

Azure Container Registry Notes

CI

The CI workflow runs all the checks and tests on PR to ensure stable code is pushed to deployments (or ACR in this case, for now).

CD

The CD workflow pushes the stable, tested images to filevault container registry

Note about creating Azure Service Principal and Azure Credentials:

• create a service principal with this command:

az ad sp create-for-rbac \
    --name "github-actions-push" \
    --role contributor \
    --scopes /subscriptions/YOUR_SUBSCRIPTION_ID/resourceGroups/YOUR_RESOURCE_GROUP \
    --sdk-auth

• --name "github-actions-push": Specifies the name of the service principal.
• --role contributor: Assigns a role to the service principal. The contributor role is a built-in role in Azure that allows full access to manage all Azure resources but does not allow you to grant access to others.
• --scopes /subscriptions/YOUR_SUBSCRIPTION_ID/resourceGroups/YOUR_RESOURCE_GROUP: The scope defines the level of access and the specific resources that the service principal can manage.
• --sdk-auth: This flag outputs the credentials in a JSON format suitable for use with Azure SDKs and tools like GitHub Actions. For development purposes only - don't share the output!