Template github repo used for new Typescript based projects.
If this is a HMPPS project then the project will be created as part of bootstrapping -
see https://github.com/ministryofjustice/hmpps-project-bootstrap. You are able to specify a template application using
the github_template_repo
attribute to clone without the need to manually do this yourself within GitHub.
This project is community managed by the mojdt #typescript
slack channel.
Please raise any questions or queries there. Contributions welcome!
Our security policy is located here.
More information about the template project including features can be found here.
Documentation to create new service is located here.
When deploying to a new namespace, you may wish to use the templates project namespace as the basis for your new namespace. This namespace contains both the kotlin and typescript template projects, which is the usual way that projects are setup. This namespace includes an AWS elasticache setup - which is required by this template project.
Copy this folder and update all the existing namespace references. If you only need the typescript configuration then remove all kotlin references. Submit a PR to the Cloud Platform team in #ask-cloud-platform. Further instructions from the Cloud Platform team can be found in the Cloud Platform User Guide
By default, release notifications are only enabled for production. The circleci configuration can be amended to send
release notifications for deployments to other environments if required. Note that if the configuration is amended,
the slack channel should then be amended to your own team's channel as dps-releases
is strictly for production release
notifications. If the slack channel is set to something other than dps-releases
, production release notifications
will still automatically go to dps-releases
as well. This is configured by releases-slack-channel
in
.circleci/config.yml
.
Ths channel should be specific to your team and is for daily / weekly security scanning job results. It is your team's
responsibility to keep up-to-date with security issues and update your application so that these jobs pass. You will
only be notified if the jobs fail. The scan results can always be found in circleci for your project. This is
configured by alerts-slack-channel
in .circleci/config.yml
.
By default Prometheus alerts are created in the application namespaces to monitor your application e.g. if your
application is crash looping, there are a significant number of errors from the ingress. Since Prometheus runs in
cloud platform AlertManager needs to be setup first with your channel. Please see
Create your own custom alerts
in the Cloud Platform user guide. Once that is setup then the custom severity label
can be used for
alertSeverity
in the helm_deploy/values-*.yaml
configuration.
Normally it is worth setting up two separate labels and therefore two separate slack channels - one for your production alerts and one for your non-production alerts. Using the same channel can mean that production alerts are sometimes lost within non-production issues.
This is the severity label for production, determined by the custom severity label
. See the above
#non-production-kubernetes-alerts for more information. This is configured in helm_deploy/values-prod.yaml
.
This is so that we can link a component to a product and thus provide team and product information in the Developer
Portal. Refer to the developer portal at https://developer-portal.hmpps.service.justice.gov.uk/products to find your
product id. This is configured in helm_deploy/<project_name>/values.yaml
.
Run the rename-project.bash
without any arguments. This will prompt for the six required parameters and create a PR.
The script requires a recent version of bash
to be installed, as well as GNU sed
in the path.
The template project is set up to run with two sets of credentials, each one support a different oauth2 flows. These need to be requested from the auth team by filling in this template and raising on their slack channel.
These are used to allow authenticated users to access the application. After the user is redirected from auth back to the application, the typescript app will use the returned auth code to request a JWT token for that user containing the user's roles. The JWT token will be verified and then stored in the user's session.
These credentials are configured using the following env variables:
- AUTH_CODE_CLIENT_ID
- AUTH_CODE_CLIENT_SECRET
These are used by the application to request tokens to make calls to APIs. These are system accounts that will have their own sets of roles.
Most API calls that occur as part of the request/response cycle will be on behalf of a user. To make a call on behalf of a user, a username should be passed when requesting a system token. The username will then become part of the JWT and can be used downstream for auditing purposes.
These tokens are cached until expiration.
These credentials are configured using the following env variables:
- CLIENT_CREDS_CLIENT_ID
- CLIENT_CREDS_CLIENT_SECRET
To allow authenticated users to access your application you need to point it to a running instance of hmpps-auth
.
By default the application is configured to run against an instance running in docker that can be started
via docker-compose
.
NB: It's common for developers to run against the instance of auth running in the development/T3 environment for local development. Most APIs don't have images with cached data that you can run with docker: setting up realistic stubbed data in sync across a variety of services is very difficult.
When deployed to an environment with multiple pods we run applications with an instance of REDIS/Elasticache to provide a distributed cache of sessions. The template app is, by default, configured not to use REDIS when running locally.
The easiest way to run the app is to use docker compose to create the service and all dependencies.
docker compose pull
docker compose up
To start the main services excluding the example typescript template app:
docker compose up --scale=app=0
Create an environment file by copying .env.example
-> .env
Environment variables set in here will be available when running start:dev
Install dependencies using npm install
, ensuring you are using node v20
Note: Using nvm
(or fnm), run nvm install --latest-npm
within the repository folder
to use the correct version of node, and the latest version of npm. This matches the engines
config in package.json
and the CircleCI build config.
And then, to build the assets and start the app with esbuild:
npm run start:dev
Once the application is running you should then be able to login with:
username: AUTH_USER password: password123456
To request specific users and roles then raise a PR to update the seed data for the in-memory DB used by Auth
npm run lint
runseslint
.npm run typecheck
runs the TypeScript compilertsc
.
npm run test
For local running, start a wiremock instance by:
docker compose -f docker-compose-test.yml up
Then run the server in test mode by:
npm run start-feature
(or npm run start-feature:dev
to run with auto-restart on changes)
And then either, run tests in headless mode with:
npm run int-test
Or run tests with the cypress UI:
npm run int-test-ui
A changelog for the service is available here