DEalog Backoffice

The DEalog Backoffice is the authoring part of the DEalog platform, a platform for official communication in cases of emergency.

For more information please see the DEalog website.

Development

The following section describes the development setup with all needed prerequisites needed to get the application up and running locally.

Requirements

• Mutagen for code syncing
• Docker for running the code
• Editor for coding

Mutagen is mainly used to speed up file sync especially on macOS.

Getting up and running

In order to get the stack booted just run ./dev start. This will check if above mentioned tools are available and accessible then start the stack.

To get all available commands of the dev script run ./dev --help.

Load sample data

The sample data spans messages and a development user.

To import the sample data run

./dev m reset

This command can also be run to have a clean starting point again.

The development user is identified by: [email protected] // password1234

Note: The application if running should be stopped. This command will drop all databases (event store and projection / Ecto database).

Testing

To run the tests please use ./dev test or ./dev test.watch.

Functional tests are ran in the en locale whereas the default locale for the app is de.

Translations

The DEalog Backoffice strings are all in english language. These are translated to German. To quickly get the po files updated run ./dev translations.update. After that you can easily fill in the translations. If not sure about the wording let it be resolved during the pull request process.

Replaying projections

The DEalog Backoffice uses the Commanded library providing CQRS support. To replay projections locally you can run the following module on the IEx shell:

For messages:

DEalog IEx>>> DealogBackoffice.Support.ProjectionRebuilder.rebuild_messages()

For accounts:

DEalog IEx>>> DealogBackoffice.Support.ProjectionRebuilder.rebuild_accounts()

These commands purge all local projections and replay the events.

Collaboration

If you want to collaborate please follow this guide:

• Fork the repository
• Implement the feature, change or bugfix
• Add tests where it makes sense
• Update the CHANGELOG.md
• Update the translations (see translation section)
• Create a pull request against the original repository

Building a release

The DEalog Backoffice can be deployed as a Docker container. The following steps are needed to have a deployable version.

Building the image

To build the image run:

docker build -t dealog/backoffice:latest .

This will prepare and build the image that then can be used to spawn a running container.

The following environment variables need to be set (and respective service need to be reachable):

• DATABASE_URL: The content / projection database. (f.e.: ecto://postgres:postgres@db/bo_db_prod)
• EVENT_STORE_DATABASE_URL: The database for the event store. (e.g. ecto://postgres:postgres@db/bo_es_db_prod)
• SECRET_KEY_BASE: The Phoenix secret. (generate via mix phx.gen.secret)
• HOSTNAME: The hostname needed for WebSockets. (f.e. localhost)
• PROJECTORS (optional): The projectors that should be active. Can either be all (default) or local.
• KAFKA_HOSTS: The Kafka host(s). (e.g. localhost:9092); Can be an empty string if local is used.
• SMTP_RELAY: The SMTP relay address. (f.e. mail.domain.tld)
• SMTP_PORT: The SMTP server port. (e.g. 587)
• SMTP_USERNAME: The username for the SMTP server.
• SMTP_PASSWORD: The password for the SMTP server.

To test this locally it is recommended to start up a PostgreSQL instance being accessible from the Backoffice Docker container and use a .env file for the variables mentioned above.

The following environment variables can be set:

• SUPER_USER_EMAIL: The email address of the super user to create.
• SUPER_USER_PASSWORD: The password for the super user to be set.

If these variables are not set everything will work fine just some functionality will not be executed.

Deployment all in one

For now there is a command script under rel/run.sh running all the setup and migration commands on container start to ease the initial deployment.

For this to work start the container like this:

docker run -it -p 5000:4000 --network my_network --env-file=./.env dealog/backoffice:latest

Note: You need to pass the -it flag to capture a ctrl-c interupt. If not passed you'd need to kill the running container.

Setup the event store

To initialize the event store the following command needs to be run:

docker run --network my_network --env-file=./.env dealog/backoffice:latest bin/backoffice eval "DealogBackoffice.Release.init_event_store()"

Note: my_network should contain the network the PostgreSQL instance is reachable from.

Running migrations

docker run --network my_network --env-file=./.env dealog/backoffice:latest bin/backoffice eval "DealogBackoffice.Release.migrate()"

Note: my_network should contain the network the PostgreSQL instance is reachable from.

Import the adminsitrative areas

docker run --network my_network --env-file=./.env dealog/backoffice:latest bin/backoffice eval "DealogBackoffice.Release.import_administrative_areas()"

Note: my_network should contain the network the PostgreSQL instance is reachable from.

Create the super user

docker run --network my_network --env-file=./.env dealog/backoffice:latest bin/backoffice eval "DealogBackoffice.Release.create_super_user()"

Note: my_network should contain the network the PostgreSQL instance is reachable from. Further ensure that the SUPER_USER_EMAIL and SUPER_USER_PASSWORD env vars are set.

Start the container

docker run -p 5000:4000 --network my_network --env-file=./.env dealog/backoffice:latest

When started on locahost the DEalog Backoffice is reachable via http://localhost:5000.

Preview deployment

In order to deploy a branch for review there is a script available. The script creates a Dokku application and deploys the current branch.

Currently this is a manual task.

Please copy the preview_env.dist to .preview_env and set the variables accordingly: cp preview_env.dist .preview_env

To deploy run: ./preview_deploy on the respective branch. To cleanup run: ./preview_deploy --cleanup on the branch. Additionally you can pass a sanitized branch name as second argument to remove a different deployment.

You need to have access to the Dev server instance to deploy.

Used technologies

The DEalog Backoffice application uses the following (main) technologies, frameworks and libraries:

• Elixir
• Phoenix Framework
• Commanded
• TailwindCSS
• Alpine.js
• Postgres

Technical decisions

As the DEalog platform transports important information and it is important to know what happened when by whom event sourcing is implemented which serves as an audit log as well as a reproducible state of projected data.

To get a snappy UI feeling the project leverages Phoenix LiveView.

Mailing is done via the great Swoosh library.