The course information project (KIP) is an initiative at KTH that was launched in 2018 to improve the quality and availability of information about KTH:s courses. The background to the project is, among other things, that it was difficult for the student to find information about the courses and even more difficult to compare information about several courses. The reason for the problems is scattered course information in several places and that there is no uniformity or assigned places for the course information. The project takes measures to consolidate course information into two locations and to present the information in a manner that is uniform for KTH. The student should find the right information about the course, depending on their needs. The result of the project is a public course site where the correct course information is collected and presented uniformly. Also, a tool is developed for teachers to enter and publish course information. Eventually, this will lead to the student making better decisions based on their needs, and it will also reduce the burden on teachers and administration regarding questions and support for the student.
Kurs-pm-api is a microservice to save course memos data to database. It accepts data from admin pages (kurs-pm-data-admin-web) and serves this data to the public view of course memos (kurs-pm-web). It uses Node.js, Mongoose, kth-node-cosmos-db, and is based on node-api.
🏠 Homepage
Kurs-pm-api is used to save data in a Azure Cosmos database by using kth-node-cosmos-db to establish a connection to Azure. Before using it, the database and collection must be prepared in Azure because it will establish a connection to an existing database, and not try to create it from a code. Mongoose is used for creating models and saving data. To present a documentation Swagger is used.
Admin and public pages uses different rights and keys to separate their behaviour.
Only admin pages may change API data while public pages can only read. Therefore while useing Swagger, a developer should choose the correct api key, because some functions will not be shown in details.
- Node.js 18
Secrets during local development are ALWAYS stored in a .env-file in the root of your project. This file should be in .gitignore.
MONGODB_URI=mongodb://kurs-pm-data-api-stage-mongodb-kthse:[password, specified in Azure]==@kurs-pm-data-api-stage-mongodb-kthse.documents.azure.com:[port, specified in Azure]/kursinfo?ssl=true&authSource=kursinfo
API_KEYS_0=?name=kursinfo-web&apiKey=[generate a password for public pages]&scope=read
API_KEYS_1=?name=kurs-pm-data&apiKey=[generate a password for admin page]&scope=write&scope=read
APPLICATIONINSIGHTS_CONNECTION_STRING=[Azure, Application insights, connection string, can be found in Overview]
USE_COSMOS_DB='true'
LOGGING_ACCESS_LOG=debug
SERVER_PORT=3001 [if you want to change port]
These settings are also available in an env.in file.
- Create database
kursinfoand manually set Throughput: 400 (Shared). Name of database will be used in a connection string. - In this database create a collection
coursememoswhere a shard key is/courseCode. - Change a connection string by adding name of database (
kursinfo) after port slush[port]/and as a search query after?asauthSorce=kursinfo:
mongodb://kurs-pm-data-api-stage-mongodb-kthse:[password]==@kurs-pm-data-api-stage-mongodb-kthse.documents.azure.com:[port]/?ssl=true/kursinfo?ssl=true&authSource=kursinfo
More information can be found in Confluence: Om kursen: Databas och API, connection string
npm installStart the service on localhost:3001/api/kurs-pm-data/swagger.
npm run start-devSecrets and docker-compose are located in cellus-registry.
npm run testlocalhost:3001/api/kurs-pm-data/_monitor
localhost:3001/api/kurs-pm-data/_about
To see more detailed behaviour in project, use Application Insights, e.g., kursinfo-web-stage-application-insights-kthse.
Copy docker-compose.yml.in to docker-compose.yml and make necessary changes, if any.
docker-compose upThe deployment process is described in Build, release, deploy. Technical details, such as configuration, is described in How to deploy your 🐳 application using Cellus-Registy and 🔧 How To Configure Your Application For The Pipeline.
ansible-vault edit secrets.envPassword find in gsv-key vault
MONGODB_URI=mongodb://kurs-pm-data-api-mongodb-kthse:[password, specified in Azure]==@kurs-pm-data-api-mongodb-kthse.documents.azure.com:[port, specified in Azure]/kursinfo?ssl=true&authSource=kursinfo
API_KEYS_0=?name=kursinfo-web&apiKey=[generate a password for public pages]&scope=read
API_KEYS_1=?name=kurs-pm-data-admin-web&apiKey=[generate a password for admin page]&scope=write&scope=read
APPLICATIONINSIGHTS_CONNECTION_STRING=[Azure, Application insights, connection string, can be found in Overview]
👤 KTH
- Website: https://kth.github.io/
- Github: @KTH