A set of API adapters to work with the GDS APIs, extracted from the frontend app.

Example usage:

publisher_api = GdsApi::Publisher.new("environment")
ostruct_publication = publisher_api.publication_for_slug('my-published-item')

panopticon_api = GdsApi::Panopticon.new("environment")
ostruct_metadata = panopticon_api.artefact_for_slug('my-published-item')

Very much still a work in progress.

Logging

Each HTTP request can be logged as JSON. Example:

{
  "request_uri":"http://contactotron.platform/contacts/1",
  "start_time":1324035128.9056342,
  "status":"success",
  "end_time":1324035129.2017104
}

By default we log to a NullLogger since we don't want to pollute your test results or logs. To log output you'll want to set GdsApi::Base.logger to something that actually logs:

GdsApi::Base.logger = Logger.new("/path/to/file.log")

Authorization

The API Adapters currently support either HTTP Basic authentication or OAuth2 (bearer token) authorization. This is only used for Panopticon registration at present. The GdsApi::Panopticon::Registerer adapter expects a constant called PANOPTICON_API_CREDENTIALS to be defined and will use that to pass the relevant options to the HTTP client.

To use bearer token authorization the format that constant should be a hash of the form:

PANOPTICON_API_CREDENTIALS = { bearer_token: 'MY_BEARER_TOKEN' }

Middleware for request tracing

We set a unique header at the cache level called GOVUK-Request-Id. In order to serve a user's request, if apps make API requests they should pass on this header, so that we can trace a request across the entire GOV.UK stack.

GdsApi::GovukRequestIdSniffer middleware takes care of this. This gem contains a railtie that configures this middleware for Rails apps without extra effort. Other Rack-based apps should opt-in by adding this line to your config.ru:

use GdsApi::GovukRequestIdSniffer

Test Helpers

There are also test helpers for stubbing various requests in other apps. Example usage of the panopticon helper:

In test_helper.rb:

require 'gds_api/test_helpers/panopticon'

class ActiveSupport::TestCase
  include GdsApi::TestHelpers::Panopticon
end

In the test:

panopticon_has_metadata('id' => 12345, 'need_ids' => [need.id],
  'slug' => 'my_slug')

Dependencies

Some of the helpers come with additional dependencies that you'll need to have installed and configured in your consuming app/lib.

At time of writing, these are:

To Do

  • Make timeout handling work

Licence

Released under the MIT Licence, a copy of which can be found in the file LICENCE.