UCL Assistant API

An API serving UCL Assistant

Docker

A prebuilt image exists on Dockerhub, which you can pull and run straight away. We recommend using a .env file for storing your environment variables, but you could also just pass them into your docker run command.

To run it locally, you can also use docker-compose:

docker-compose build
docker-compose up

Non-Docker Development

Install and start redis-server:

apt install redis-server
service redis-server start

Run the auto-reloading nodemon server:

npm run start:dev

Secrets

Copy example file and add your UCL API client ID and secret keys. Also, set SECRET to a random value; this will be used for session keys. You can also add a custom internal port for the server to run on, but for all intents and purposes, leaving it works fine too (especially if running with Docker and/or Kubernetes).

$ cp .env.example .env
$ nano .env

UCLAPI_CLIENT_ID=???
UCLAPI_CLIENT_SECRET=???
SECRET=???

Run on Kubernetes

Build k8s secret from the env file created earlier.

$ kubectl create secret generic ucl-assistant-backend-secret --from-env-file='.env'

Now create the deployments and services from the YAML files:

$ kubectl create -f ../deployment/backend.yaml
$ kubectl create -f ../deployment/backend-service.yaml

And then the service will start up as ucl-assistant-backend.

Running Tests

Run npm run test:dev to run Jest in interactive mode where it'll re-run all tests as you develop.

To run tests on an ad hoc basis, use npm run test