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ODN Backend

Build Status Code Climate Test Coverage

A REST API for the Open Data Network. Available at api.opendatanetwork.com.

Documentation

API documentation is available on Apiary.

Development

The ODN backend is built using Node.js. After cloning the repository and downloading node, simply run npm install from within the project directory to install all dependencies.

The ODN backend uses syntactic features of ES6 that are only available in recent versions of Node, so it may fail to run with older versions. Make sure that you use the Node version specified in package.json (currently 6.2.2). You can check your node version using node --version.

Memcached

The ODN backend uses memcached to cache responses from the Socrata backend and store map sessions.

Installation with Homebrew

Memcached is available over homebrew. To install it, use brew install memcached. There are many options for running memcached including the most direct: /usr/local/opt/memcached/bin/memcached To see them all, use brew info memcached

Flushing the Cache

Run ./flush-memcache.sh to flush the development cache.

Server

Use npm run server to start the development server at localhost:3001. It will automatically restart when the source is changed. Start a local memcached server to get maps to work.

Tests

REST API tests are written using Chakram and run with Mocha. They are available in the test directory. Run tests using npm test.

Sometimes, running tests will trigger a webserver restart which will then cause many tests to fail. If this happens, start the server using node app.js.

Test Coverage

Test coverage reports for master are available on Code Climate.

To view test coverage while in development: start the server, run the tests, and then go to localhost:3001/coverage to see the reports.

Deployment

The ODN backend is hosted on Heroku. There are two environments: production and staging.

To deploy to an environment, push to the corresponding branch on github. For production, push to master and for staging, push to staging. There should be no need to manually deploy to Heroku, but if you do, make sure that master stays in sync with what is on Heroku.

Check LastPass for Heroku access.

MemJS

The ODN uses the Heroku MemJS add-on for memcached. The cache is flushed on each deploy to avoid synchronization conflicts. Make sure to the NODE_ENV environmental variable to production on every Heroku dyno so that the cache knows to flush itself.

Integration Tests

Integration tests are run to check each deployment using Travis CI. These tests must pass for the deployment to succeed.

Running Tests before Committing

Since all tests must pass for a deployment to succeed, it is a good idea to run unit tests locally before pushing to GitHub. The pre-commit.sh script will make sure that all unit tests succeed before every commit. To install it, run:

ln -s -f ../../pre-commit.sh .git/hooks/pre-commit

Load Tests

The load-test.sh script can be used to put load on the service. It randomly generates thousands of valid URLs and then uses Siege to test them.

First, install Siege. On a mac, just use brew install siege.

Then, run the load-test.sh script with a domain. For example, test against localhost, use

./load-test.sh localhost:3001

This will start a small load test. To change the parameters of the test, edit load-test.sh. Please do not use this script on production. Also, remember that the main bottleneck of the ODN API is the Socrata platform, and that a load test of the ODN is a load test of the platform. Don't take it down.

Logging

All Heroku logs are forwarded to Sumo Logic. This includes basic information for each request, as well as detailed stack traces for all exceptions and 500s. Search with _source=odn_api_heroku to see all of the logs.

Use the Sumo dashboard for an overview of how the service is performing. For access to this dashboard, use the Socrata Sumo account.

Monitoring

There are several Pingdom alerts that monitor the service:

Pingdom will alert Chris, Deep, Lane, and Tosh if the API is down. Once apps are built around the ODN API, alerts will be sent to on call.

Adding Data to the ODN

See /data for information on adding data to the ODN.