About this project

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) is the independent regulatory agency charged with administering and enforcing the federal campaign finance law. The FEC has jurisdiction over the financing of campaigns for the U.S. House, Senate, Presidency and the Vice Presidency.

This project will provide a web application for filling out FEC campaign finance information. The project code is distributed across these repositories:

• fecfile-web-app: this is the browser-based front-end developed in Angular
• fecfile-web-api: RESTful endpoint supporting the front-end
• fecfile-validate: data validation rules and engine

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Set up

Prerequisites

Software necessary to run the application locally

• Docker
• Docker Compose

Docker basic usage.

When running docker-compose you will need to be in the root directory of the project. The reason for this is that docker-compose looks for docker-compose.yml to be in the same directory where it's run. You will also need at least 3GB of memory allocated for docker during the build.

Run the fecfile web API application

docker-compose up -d

You should set the following environment variables in the shell where you are running 'docker-compose up -d'. Proper values for the development variables are shown here as an example

export DATABASE_URL="postgres://postgres:postgres@db/postgres"
export FECFILE_TEST_DB_NAME="postgres"
export DJANGO_SECRET_KEY="If_using_test_db_use_secret_key_in_cloud.gov"
export FEC_API="https://api.open.fec.gov/v1/"
# Note - this API key has a very low rate limit -
# For a better key, reach out to a team member or get one at https://api.open.fec.gov/developers/
export FEC_API_KEY="DEMO_KEY"
# Test EFO Services (for test filings):
export FEC_FILING_API="EFO_get_this_from_team_member"
export FEC_FILING_API_KEY="EFO_get_this_from_team_member"

Shut down the containers

docker-compose down

see all running containers

docker ps

running commands in a running container

docker-compose exec <container name> <command>

Deployment (FEC team only)

Special Note: If the fecfile-validate repo was updated, the commit of the update needs to be updated in the requirements.txt file otherwise the CircleCI cache will not roll out the change.

Create a feature branch

Using git-flow extensions: git flow feature start feature_branch

Without the git-flow extensions: git checkout develop git pull git checkout -b feature/feature_branch develop

• Developer creates a GitHub PR when ready to merge to develop branch
• Reviewer reviews and merges feature branch into develop via GitHub
• [auto] develop is deployed to dev

Create a release branch

• Using git-flow extensions:

git flow release start sprint-#

• Without the git-flow extensions:

git checkout develop
git pull
git checkout -b release/sprint-# develop
git push --set-upstream origin release/sprint-#

• Developer creates a PR in GitHub to merge release/sprint-# branch into the main branch to track if commits pass deployment checks. The actual merge will happen when deploying a release to production.

Create and deploy a hotfix

• Using git-flow extensions:

git flow hotfix start my-fix
# Work happens here
git flow hotfix finish my-fix

• Without the git-flow extensions:

git checkout -b hotfix/my-fix main
# Work happens here
git push --set-upstream origin hotfix/my-fix

• Developer creates a hotfix branch, commits changes, and makes a PR to the main and develop branches:
• Reviewer merges hotfix/my-fix branch into develop and main
• [auto] develop is deployed to dev. Make sure the build passes before deploying to main.
• Developer deploys hotfix/my-fix branch to main using Deploying a release to production instructions below

Deploying a release to production

• Reviewer approves PR and merges into main (At this point the code is automatically deployed)
• Check CircleCI for passing pipeline tests
• If tests pass, continue
• (If commits were made to release/sprint-#) Developer creates a PR in GitHub to merge release/sprint-# branch into the develop branch
• Reviewer approves PR and merges into develop
• Delete release/sprint-# branch
• Publish a new release using tag sprint-#, be sure to Auto-generate release notes
  • On Github, click on "Code" tab, then the "tags" link, then the "Releases" toggle
  • Click the button "Draft a new release"
  • Enter the new sprint tag "sprint-XX"
  • Set Target option to "main"
  • Set Release title to "sprint-XX"
  • Click the button "Generate release notes"
  • Click the "Publish release" button

Technical Environment Plan

The fecfile-web-api is our system's backend while the fecfile-web-app is the single-page angular app. The fecfile-web-api is deployed as a cloud.gov application per environment (dev, stage, and prod). Each cloud.gov fecfile-web-api application has at least two instances running. Similarly, the fecfile-web-app is deployed as a cloud.gov application per environment (dev, stage, and prod). There are also at least two instances running per cloud.gov fecfile-web-app application.

The following events occur for fecfile-web-api and fecfile-web-app independently of each other:

• When a branch is merged into the develop branch, it is deployed to the dev environment on cloud.gov
  • The Dev environment is used for the bulk of sprint integration and QA testing
• When a release is cut (creating a release tag in git), that release is deployed to the stage environment on cloud.gov.
  • The Stage environment is used for final deployment preparation, integration testing, and final QA testing.
• When the release is merged into the main branch, it is deployed to the prod environment on cloud.gov
  • The Production environment will be used by end users once the application launches.

Additional developer notes

This section covers a few topics we think might help developers after setup.

Git Secrets

Set up git secrets to protect oneself from committing sensitive information such as passwords to the repository.

• First install AWS git-secret utility in your PATH so it can be run at the command line: https://github.com/awslabs/git-secrets#installing-git-secrets
• Once you have git-secrets installed, run the fecfile-web-api/install-git-secrets-hook.sh shell script in the root directory of your cloned fecfile-web-api repo to install the pre-commit hooks. NOTE: The pre-commit hook is installed GLOBALLY by default so commits to all cloned repositories on your computer will be scanned for sensitive data. See the comments at the top of the script for local install options.
• See git-secrets README for more features: https://github.com/awslabs/git-secrets#readme

Code formatting

Black is the Python code formatter used on the project.

• Install using pip install black.
• If using vscode, add (or update) the following section of your settings.json to the following so that code is formatted on save:

"[python]": {
    "editor.defaultFormatter": "ms-python.black-formatter",
    "editor.formatOnSave": true
}

• To format a specific file or directory manually, use black <file_or_directory>

Commit local code changes to origin daily

As a best practice policy, please commit any feature code changes made during the day to origin each evening before signing off for the day.

Google-style inline documentation

The project is using the Google Python Style Guide as the baseline to keep code style consistent across project repositories. See here for comment style rules: https://google.github.io/styleguide/pyguide.html#38-comments-and-docstrings