Service directories done right

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Example screens from the app

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Introduction

Outpost is a standards-driven service management application, API and comprehensive set of admin tools for managing records about local community services, groups and activities. It is part of the Outpost Platform.

Outpost works alongside a seperate API component and Scout a directory application.

It can also act as an OAuth provider via Doorkeeper.

🌏 Deployment

🧱 Tech stack

• Ruby on rails
• PostgreSQL database
• MongoDB database for use with Outpost API (optional)

🌎 Running it on the web

Deploying using heroku (recommended)

For more information see getting started

Outpost is suitable for 12-factor app hosting like Heroku. It has a Procfile that will automatically run pending rails migrations on every deploy, to reduce downtime.

🚨 When deploying Outpost you will need to schedule specific tasks, see configuration for more information.

Deploying using docker

Since Outpost is designed to be simple to setup we recommend using 12-factor app hosting such as Heroku. However we do provide a docker image to host your own instance.

Please not that heroku will automatically setup SECRET_KEY_BASE for you but in docker you will need to do this manually.

You can see examples of how to set up the environment in the makefile. The production image defines an entrypoint and a cmd, the default entrypoint is /start and the default cmd is web. We're using herokuish to replicate a similar deployment environment to heroku so this replicates the setup.

By default when running the container it will just run the rails application, you can then update the cmd to one in the procfile or you can define your own entrypoint file

#!/bin/sh
# https://stackoverflow.com/a/38732187/1935918
set -e

if [ -f tmp/pids/server.pid ]; then
  rm tmp/pids/server.pid
fi

bin/herokuish procfile exec rake db:migrate

bin/herokuish procfile exec "$@"

💻 Running it locally

For more information see getting started

For now we recommend using docker to run the application locally as this ensures that the versions are as close to the production environment as possible.

cp -rp sample.env .env
docker compose up -d

# setup dummy data and example user login
docker compose exec outpost bin/rails SEED_ADMIN_USER=true SEED_DUMMY_DATA=true SEED_DEFAULT_DATA=true db:seed

This will setup outpost, mongo, postgres and the outpost-api-service on your machine.

• Outpost: http://localhost:3000
• Outpost API service: http://localhost:3001
• You can connect to the the postgres database locally using localhost:5433
• You can connect to the mongo database locally using localhost:27018

You can log in with [email protected] and the initial password you set in the configuration

See configuration for setting up environmental variables.

Populate with dummy data

# create a default admin user
docker compose exec outpost bin/rails SEED_ADMIN_USER=true db:seed

# create dummy data
docker compose exec outpost bin/rails SEED_DUMMY_DATA=true db:seed

# default accessibilities, send_needs and suitabilities only
docker compose exec outpost bin/rails SEED_DEFAULT_DATA=true db:seed

# all of the above
docker compose exec outpost bin/rails SEED_ADMIN_USER=true SEED_DUMMY_DATA=true SEED_DEFAULT_DATA=true db:seed

The application will be running on localhost:3000.

Populate mongo database

docker compose exec outpost bin/rake build_public_index

Run the rails console

docker compose exec outpost bin/rails c

Run tests

docker compose exec outpost bundle exec rspec

Run end to end tests

docker compose exec outpost rake

Outpost dev-base

If you need to you can build the outpost-dev-base image locally, you will need to update the Dockerfile FROM to use your local version as well.

docker build --progress=plain -f .docker/images/dev-base/Dockerfile -t outpost-dev-base .

🪴 Usage

For more documentation on how to use Outpost see the documentation

🧬 Configuration

Environmental Variables

You can provide config with a .env file. Run cp sample.env .env to create a fresh one.

The following environmental variables are required for minimal setup of Outpost.

Environment specific

Variable	Description	Example	Required?
SHOW_ENV_BANNER	show a bright warning banner on non-production environments	staging	Only to warn about non-production environments
RAILS_ENV	Rails environment	production	No, defaults to production
NODE_ENV	Node environment	production	No, defaults to production
PROJECT_NAME	Determines the name of the group in docker	outpost_development	No
LANG	Determines the default language	en_US.UTF-8	No
RAILS_SERVE_STATIC_FILES	Tells rails to serve static assets	true	Yes in production when using docker
SECRET_KEY_BASE	In docker environment required to compile assets successfully run: RAILS_ENV=production rake secret to generate	randomlettersandcharacters	Yes in production when using docker

Databases

Variable	Description	Example	Required?
DATABASE_URL	the main PostgreSQL database	postgres://user:password @example.com:5432/database	Yes, if different from default, and in production
DB_URI	the MongoDB database for the public index	mongodb://user:password @example.com/database	Yes, if using the API service

Emails

Variable	Description	Example	Required?
NOTIFY_API_KEY	to send emails with Notify		In production only
NOTIFY_TEMPLATE_ID	ID of a notify template, as described here		In production only
MAILER_FROM	Who are the emails sent from Outpost from	[email protected]	In production only
MAILER_HOST	where the app lives on the web, to correctly form urls in emails	https://example.com	In production only

Google Maps

Variable	Description	Example	Required?
GOOGLE_API_KEY	with the geocoding API enabled, to geocode postcodes		Yes, for geocoding features
GOOGLE_CLIENT_KEY	with the javascript and static maps APIs enabled, to add map views to admin screens		Yes, for map features

Initialisation and setup

You can make use of the INITIAL_ADMIN_PASSWORD environmental variable when initialising your application.

Variable	Description	Example	Required?
INITIAL_ADMIN_PASSWORD	an initial admin password to log in with for local development		Locally only
MONGO_INITDB_DATABASE	Name of database to create and initialise in docker container	outpost_production	No
POSTGRES_USER	User to create and initialise in docker container	outpost_production	No
POSTGRES_PASSWORD	Database password to create and initialise in docker container	outpost_production	No
POSTGRES_DB	Name of database to create and initialise in docker container	outpost_production	No

Deprecated

The following ENV variables are or will soon be deprecated.

Variable	Description	Example	Required?
INSTANCE	Instance name, used with the directories feature and to customise some parts of the interface	buckinghamshire	No
FEEDBACK_FORM_URL	a form where users can submit feedback about the website	https://example.com	In production only

Tasks

Outpost depends on on several important rake tasks. To run these tasks use bin/rake task:name.

Some of these can be run manually, and some are best scheduled using Heroku Scheduler or similar.

Task	Description	Suggested schedule
open_objects:import	Run the bespoke import job from Open Objects. For this to succeed, you need several source CSV data files in the /lib/seeds folder. Will take a long time.	One-off
build_public_index	Build the initial public index for the API service to use.	One-off
process_permanent_deletions	Permanently delete any services and users that have been "discarded" for more than 30 days.	Weekly
ofsted:create_initial_items	Build the initial Ofsted items table	One-off
ofsted:update_items	Check for any changes to Ofsted items against the Ofsted API	Daily, overnight
update_counters:all	Update the counter caches to keep them in sync	Daily, overnight

Settings page

There is a settings page located at /admin/settings/edit where you can configure certain aspects of the Outpost interface.

A user will need to have the superadmin permission in order to access this page. This permission can currently only be set through the command line.

✨ Features

Outpost API

Outpost's API component relies on a public index stored on MongoDB.

You can run bin/rails build_public_index to build the public index for the first time. Active record callbacks keep it up to date as services are changed.

Data import

See documentation on data import.

OAuth provider

Outpost can work as an identity provider for other apps. Users with the highest permissions can access the /oauth/applications route to create credentials.

Once authenticated, consumer apps can fetch information about the currently logged in user with the /api/v1/me endpoint.

File uploads

Currently these are only used in the settings page to replace the site logo so these details are not required.

Variable	Description	Example	Required?
GCP_PROJECT	Name of the google cloud project	*	No
GCP_BUCKET	Name of the google cloud bucket	*	No
GCP_PROJECT_ID	Name of the google cloud project id	*	No
GCP_PRIVATE_KEY_ID	Google cloud private key id	*	No
GCP_PRIVATE_KEY	Google cloud private key	*	No
GCP_CLIENT_EMAIL	Google cloud client email	*	No
GCP_CLIENT_ID	Google cloud client id	*	No
GCP_CLIENT_X509_CERT_URL	Google cloud x509 certificate	*	No

Ofsted integration

Outpost can integrate with the Ofsted API to bring in a list of records and create service entries from them.

The following ENV vars are used to enable this functionality

Variable	Description	Example	Required?
OFSTED_API_KEY	to access the feed of Ofsted items		Only if running Ofsted rake tasks
OFSTED_FEED_API_ENDPOINT	to access the feed of Ofsted items		Only if running Ofsted rake tasks

Directories

NB this feature is subject to change at any time

There is a feature called directories in Outpost which lets you configure named directories or teams, this changes the interface so that services can be viewed all together or per directory, for example Family information services and Adult Social Care.

To see multiple directories in Outpost, run the app with:

INSTANCE=buckinghamshire rails s

This will start the app with the directories listed in config/app_config.yaml.

To add more directories, or set up another instance with separate directories, edit config/app_config.yaml.

🧪 Tests

It has some rspec tests on key functionality. Run them with:

bundle exec rspec

Code coverage

SimpleCov and Codecov are set up to track code coverage. To see the code coverage on a local branch, run the test suite and open coverage/index.html:

rake
open coverage/index.html

The coverage report is sent to Codecov after the tests run in CI. Once you open a PR, Codecov will post a comment with a handy coverage delta and a link to view line-by-line coverage for the PR.

Compile assets

Its also a good idea to check that assets are able to be precompiled before deploying

bundle exec rails assets:precompile