postcode_checker

Postcode Checker is a simple web app to help people find out if their postcode is in a support service area.

Deployed app

Test a staging version of the app online

https://service-area-check.herokuapp.com

Visit https://service-area-check.herokuapp.com/admin to manage service areas and postcodes.

Pre-requisites

Ruby - You will need at least version: 2.7.2, we use RVM to manage different versions of Ruby.
Postgres - We use Postgres for our database, install it locally on Mac OSX with Homebrew. Once installed you can run brew services start postgresql.

Environment variables

The project uses environment variables to manage configuration variables and secrets like API keys. Using the environment for configuration is a feature of 12 Factor Apps.

In development we use dotenv to manage environment variables on a per project basis.

Create a file in the root of your project with the filename .env
There is a .env.template file in the root of the project that has all of the keys needed for the application to run locally.
Copy these keys into your .env file and set them on your machine.

As it is not an application secret POSTCODE_VALIDATION_SERVICE_URI=postcodes.io

Note: Ordinarily I would store secrets like database credentials in the environment. However to make it easier to get started I have left these configuration values hard coded.

Getting started

Git clone the repo to your local machine
Change into the directory with cd postcode_checker
bundle install to install ruby dependencies.
yarn install to install frontend depenencies.
rails db:create db:migrate db:seed builds the database, runs initial migrations and seeds the database
To run the app use a process manager like hivemind to run the app locally from the development Procfile hivemind Procfile.dev. This mirrors how the app will run in production on Heroku.

Note: If you don't have Hivemind installed you can alternatively run rails s to run the rails server.

Security

This project uses brakeman to detect potential security vulnerabilities. Run brakeman in the root of the project to do a security scan.

Tests

We use rspec for automated tests. Run the test suite with bundle exec rspec from the project root.

Documentation

Write and find the documentation in the docs directory.

Technical decisions

This project uses Architectural Decision Records to document technical decisions.

Read the technical decisions

Contributing

Style guide

Ruby

The project uses rubocop to maintain code style and format consistency. It uses the following rubocop extensions:

Run rubocop from the project root to lint the code

mathewtrivett / postcode-checker