@bloom-housing/backend-core

Bloom Backend Services

This package is a NestJS application that provides a core set of backend services via REST API endpoints to apps using the Bloom Housing framework. Information is stored in a Postgres database, accessed via TypeORM.

OpenAPI Documentation

OpenAPI (fka Swagger) documentation is automatically generated by the server at http://localhost:3100/docs/ for a standard local development environment. A raw JSON version of the schema is also available at /docs-json/, suitable for API client code generation or other code-based consumers.

Getting Started for Developers

The following steps should provide a working local environement for development purposes:

Setting up your local environment variables

Operational configuration the service is read from environment variables. Copy .env.template to .env and edit the settings specific to your development environment. Make sure the Database URL and Test Database URL match your Postgres configuration.

Installing Postgres

You can install Postgres using Homebrew with the following command: brew install postgresql.

Setting up a Database

There are two databases used in this project: bloom and bloom_test. First is used every time you are starting a project with yarn dev and second one is only used in end-to-end tests. Corresponding TypeORM configs are defined in ormconfig.ts and ormconfig.test.ts. If you are just starting to work with the projects it's best to simply run:

yarn && yarn db:reseed

that will create bloom DB for you, migrate it to the latest schema and seed with appropriate dev data. If running the reseed command requires that you input a password for Postgres, set the following environment variables: PGUSER to postgres and PGPASSWORD to the default password you inputted for the postgres user during Postgres installation.

Dropping the DB:

yarn db:drop

Creating the DB:

yarn db:create

Seeding the DB:

yarn db:seed

Generating a new migration:

yarn db:migration:generate

Applying migrations:

yarn db:migration:run

Installing Redis

You can install Redis using Homebrew with the following command: brew install redis.

To start Redis: redis-server.

To have launch Redis as background service and restart at login: brew services start redis.

Test if Redis is working: redis-cli ping

Debugging

You can connect a debugger to the backend by starting the backend server with yarn debug.

To connect to it from VS Code, add a configuration to launch.json that looks like

{
  "name": "Attach to Backend",
  "port": 9229,
  "request": "attach",
  "skipFiles": [
    "<node_internals>/**"
  ],
  "type": "node",
  "restart": true
},

Running Tests

End-to-end tests:

yarn test:e2e:local

Unit tests:

yarn test

Translations

Backend keeps translations for email related content in the DB in table translations . There is an endpoint /translations exposing CRUD operations on this table (admin only). Translations are defined for each county code and language pair e.g. (Alameda, en). To modify a particular translation pair:

1. Fetch GET /translations and list all the translations
2. Find an ID of a pair that interest you
3. Use PUT /translations/:translationId to modify it's content