TCEX App Template

PROJECT MOVED TO GITLAB: https://gitlab.com/fhightower-templates.

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A template for quickly building quality TCEX Apps using cookiecutter.

Prerequisites

1. cookiecutter (required)

You will need to install cookiecutter . This can be as easy as:

pip install cookiecutter

but there are other options available in the cookiecutter documentation .

2. bumpversion (optional)

Bumpversion is really handy for incrementing version numbers. This app template is designed to work with bumpversion so that typing bumpversion patch, bumpversion minor, or bumpversion major will automatically increment the patch version number in {{ cookiecutter.project_slug }}/__init__.py and {{ cookiecutter.project_slug }}/install.json. You can read more about bumpversion here.

Usage

To quickly create a TCEX app (which will be created in a directory in the current working directory), run:

cookiecutter https://github.com/fhightower-templates/tcex-app-template.git

Running this command will ask you a few questions about the app (like the author's name, project name, and initial vesion number). Once, you're done, it will have created a directory in the current working directory with the contents of the app.

The directory structure of the new app will look something like:

• <APP-SLUG>

  • .bumpversion.cfg - Manage bumpversion
  • .editorconfig - See http://editorconfig.org/
  • .gitignore
  • Makefile - Makefile with commands for packing, preparing, and testing the app
  • README.md

  • <APP-SLUG> - Directory containing the contents of the app

    • __init__.py - Basic details about the app
    • __main__.py - Default file from https://github.com/ThreatConnect-Inc/tcex/blob/master/tcex/__main__.py
    • <APP-SLUG>.py - This app contains the actual content of the app
    • install.json - Provides details about how the app will be configured (see https://docs.threatconnect.com/en/latest/deployment_config.html)
    • requirements.txt - List out the packages required to run package
    • setup.cfg - This file is a work-around for a known bug in python installed using homebrew
    • setup.py - Standard setup.py
    • tcex.json - Provide details for testing the app locally (see https://docs.threatconnect.com/en/latest/tcex/building_apps.html#profile-format)
    • tcex_json_schema.json - File from https://github.com/ThreatConnect-Inc/tcex/blob/master/tcex/tcex_json_schema.json to validate the format of the install.json

  • tests/ - Directory for holding tests for the app

The key is that the app's contents are placed in <APP-SLUG>/<APP-SLUG>/<APP-SLUG>.py. The configuration of the app is managed in <APP-SLUG>/<APP-SLUG>/install.json. And the parameters used for local testing are provided in <APP-SLUG>/<APP-SLUG>/tcex.json.

Now, move into the app's directory.

ls
cd /<APP-SLUG>

To view the commands provided by the make file, run: make. To setup an environment for testing run: make profile. Then, to build local modules for testing the app, run: make lib. Now you are ready to run the app locally. To do this, run: make run. This will create a directory in <APP-SLUG>/<APP-SLUG>/log/ with any logs and messages.

There are a few make commands that are particularly useful:

• make clean: remove all tcex, build, test, coverage and Python artifacts
• make lib: download required packages into a lib directory
• make pack: package the app for deployment to TC
• make run: run the app locally
• make profile: create a tcex.json profile for the app
• make test: run tests on the app

Installing in ThreatConnect

To install an app created with this template in ThreatConnect, run:

make lib
make pack

This will create a .tcx file in the top app directory which will work in ThreatConnect assuming that your instance of ThreatConnect has the same version of python that was used during the make lib command.