LoopBack 4 Captcha Service

This project is a simple proof-of-concept application server backed by the LoopBack 4 framework. It provides CAPTCHA generation and verification functionality.

IMPORTANT NOTICE: this is not meant to be production-ready.

Running the service

You can either run the service from the source folder (e.g. for development) or you can use Docker to spin up an image that runs the application.

Running locally

You will first need to install dependencies:

npm install

There are some node packages (canvas) that rely on native libraries. Depending on your system architecture or OS, they might need to be built from source: in that case, please refer to this README paragraph to understand which tools/packages are needed.

After this step, you should create a file named .env in the root folder of the project, containing the configuration to connect to a MySQL server:

MYSQL_HOST={host}
MYSQL_USER={username}
MYSQL_PASS={password}
MYSQL_DB={database}

Once you're done, you are ready to start the server:

npm start

The server will be running on port 3000 by default. Open http://127.0.0.1:3000 in your browser to see the application running.

Running on Docker

If you want to use Docker to run the application, you can build an image using the provided Dockerfile. For simplicity, there is also an npm command you can use:

npm run docker:build

This will build an image named ricky92/lb-captcha-service.

If, as an alternative, you want to spin up a working environment quickly, you can use the provided docker-compose.yml file by running the following command:

docker-compose up -d

This solution will also run a MySQL server that the service will connect to.

Tests

Some simple black-box tests are included. Run them using the following command:

npm test