cars test api

This is a Vercel (formerly Zeit) application to provide a RESTFul interface for manipulating 'cars'.

It is to provide an API for this test: https://github.com/ecsdigital/cars-react-test

Currently, deployed to https://cars-test-service.now.sh

now/zeit/vercel?

Chosen because it's simple and free to deploy.

It takes a bit of getting used to because the file names are meaningful (a bit too magic really). E.g.

• /api/car/[car].js -> /api/car/SOMECARID ({car:"SOMECARID"} gets pass in the query property of the request object in the handler).
• /api/car/index.js -> /api/car.

getting started

Optional: It's worth installing httpie as examples below use it.

Have nodejs 10+ installed.

You will need to initialise zeit/vercel/now for your environment:

(Note: now cli is now (lol) vercel, but now is an alias)

npm install -g now
now init

Once you have a name for the app, you will be able to deploy and use the api.

api

Prod:

https://YOURAPPNAME.now.sh/api/car

Test:

https://YOURAPPNAME.YOURUSERNAME.vercel.app/api/car

Details: https://github.com/ecsdigital/cars-react-test/blob/master/README.md

state

For laziness (not having to deploy any databases to aws etc), state is stored in jsonbin.

The state for all users is stored in a single json object/bin. We don't imagine a lot of candidates taking the test, and we use a data retention threshold to remove data (DATA_RETENTION_THRESHOLD_MS), so we aren't too worried about this scaling well!

If you wish to deploy this application you will need a working JSONbin account, a bin id and an secret-key to write to the bin:

1. Create you jsonbin account and get your secret key here: https://jsonbin.io
2. Create a bin:

   http https://api.jsonbin.io/b any=data private:true 'secret-key:JSONBIN_SECRET'

3. take note of your bin id:

   {
       "data": {
           "any": "data"
       },
       "id": "JSONBIN_ID",
       "private": true,
       "success": true
   }

4. check you can get the data back:

   http https://api.jsonbin.io/b/JSONBIN_ID 'secret-key:JSONBIN_SECRET'

You will need these values in your config...

config

Locally, config is set in a (git ignored) .env file:

JSONBIN_SECRET=foo
JSONBIN_ID=foo
AUTH_SECRET=supersecretecstoken

... but when deploying to test/production it's managed by vercel.

This is how you add the secrets to vercel:

now secret add jsonbin-id JSONBIN_ID
now secret add jsonbin-secret JSONBIN_SECRET
now secret add cars-auth-secret AUTH_SECRET

The secrets are bound to env vars at runtime through now.json.

The string in cars-auth-secret will be used in our (very simplistic) auth below:

auth

The API has arbitrary authentication just to test the candidates ability to apply it.

Each request will need to send authentication in the header:

A cURL example:

http https://cars-test-service.now.sh/api/car 'authorization: Bearer NAME.AUTH_SECRET'

NAME can/should be replaced with any a-z string (ideally a name). AUTH_SECRET must match the value set in the env vars when deploying the application.

deploy

local:

now dev

test:

now

prod:

now --prod

TODO

• Use a better backend (mysql/mongo etc)
• Deploy to a 'proper' platform (rather than vercel)
• Make the deployment ECS specific (rather than deployed using sam.adams@ecs-digital.co.uk's zeit account)
  • might require moving from Zeit or paying for it
  • if we change the url of the api we need to update the react test