cityofaustin/ctxfloods-backend

CTXfloods-backend

Central Texas Floods Backend

• Set Up Development Environment
• Run Tests
• Development Tips
• Disaster Recovery

Set Up Development Environment

💾 Install Postgres v10.6 🐘

• If you're using macOS I strongly recommend using Postgres.app

💾 Install yarn

👯 Clone the repo

git clone https://github.com/cityofaustin/ctxfloods-backend
cd ctxfloods-backend
yarn install

🐘 Make sure postgres is running

• Make sure psql works in your terminal

🌱 Seed Data

yarn setup-local

⌨️ Start the local server

yarn start-local

💾 Clone and install CTXfloods-frontend

🍻 Cheers! The backend should now be up and running!

Run Tests

yarn test

Warning: Running "yarn test" will drop your local floods data and load in test data. You will need to re-run "yarn setup-local" to reload the correct seed data.

It might be necessary to install Watchman if you see errors running the yarn test command. See this Github Issue for more details: facebook/create-react-app#871

Deployment Process

Branch promotion works like this:
feature -> dev -> master

Create your feature branch as a branch off "dev". That feature branch will be merged into "dev", which will then be merged into "master."

CTXFloods uses TravisCI for continuous integration. Whenever you push to github, a TravisCI build will be triggered. By default this will only run the tests. If you want to deploy your feature branch on a git push, add the name of your feature branch to deployment/devDeployConfig with the option deploy: true. (Look at travis.yml and deployment/shouldDeploy.js to see exactly how this logic works.) Subsequent pushes from the same branch will update this same stack. Ex:

"195-camera": {
  deploy: true,
  seed: true
}

Specify seed: true if you would like the seed data to be loaded into your deployed backend.

A deployed backend CloudFormation stack consists of a Postgres database and 8 lambda function endpoints (located in the handlers/ directory). All of this will be created automatically when TravisCI's build phase runs serverless.yml from deployment/deploy.sh.

Environment variables are sourced from deployment/vars depending on your branch. (All feature branches share the same environment variables as dev.sh. Any feature branch specific configs should be handled in deployment/devDeployConfig.js.) Any environment variable prefixed with TRAVIS_ is a secret environment variable that is stored in TravisCI. It will get loaded in during the build phase of a TravisCI/github deployment.

It would be possible to deploy ctxfloods without continuous integration by running deployment/deploy.sh. However, you would have to provide your own substitutes for the TRAVIS_ environment variables.

Development Tips

• If you added a new postgres migration file to the backend, regenerate the frontend's graphql schema file by running yarn get-schema
• Environment variables prefixed by TRAVIS_ are secret variables stored in TravisCI. They get loaded in during the build phase of a TravisCI/github deployment.

Disaster Recovery

• The postgres database can be restored by using a snapshot backup. This requires a couple changes to your serverless.yml file.
  1. Add DBSnapshotIdentifier: '[rds snapshot identifier]' to the pgDB Properties section of serverless.yml.
     • Note - If the DBSnapshotIdentifier property is ever removed (or changed) for the same AWS Service, this would trigger a database delete. The DeletionProtection Property would prevent that deletion, but it would also prevent your stack from updating. More information can be found here: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSCloudFormation/latest/UserGuide/aws-properties-rds-database-instance.html
  2. Remove the DBName Property. This Property is incompatible with DBSnapshotIdentifier.