zodiac

API gateway and administration interface for Project Electron microservices, managed via a message queue.

Setup

Install git and clone the repository

$ git clone https://github.com/RockefellerArchiveCenter/zodiac.git

Install Docker and run docker-compose from the root directory. You can include all associated microservice submodules.

$ cd zodiac
$ git submodule init
$ git submodule update
$ docker-compose up

Once the applications start successfully, you should be able to access zodiac in your browser at http://localhost:8001

When you're done, shut down docker-compose

$ docker-compose down

Or, if you want to remove all data

$ docker-compose down -v

The first time you start zodiac, a set of Applications, Services, Users and Tasks will be created. You can recreate this default application state at any time by running a custom Django management command and passing the --reset flag:

$ python manage.py setup_services --reset

Usage

zodiac provides a unified interface for microservices, allowing users to both administer these services and the applications to which they belong as well as track activity within the microservice layer. It also includes a message queue which improves service scalability and activity monitoring.

Applications

Applications are clusters of services which share some common code. In the context of Project Electron, these are a series of Django projects. However, zodiac doesn't care how these applications are implemented as long as the services they provide are available via REST endpoints.

Services

Services provide small and clearly-defined functionality, which are called via REST endpoints. If the service requires it, zodiac can pass an additional URL to a service (via a post_service_url parameter) so it can trigger another service via a POST request. This is especially useful if a service needs to deliver a payload to another service.

Message Queue

zodiac includes a messaging layer to queue and process tasks. It does this via Celery and Celery Beat, which are installed as daemons in the Docker container and run on startup. To process queued callbacks, you will need to add a periodic task using the Django Admin interface. Task results are available in the user interface.

Default Users

When you first spin Zodiac up, a number of users will be created as follows:

• A system administrator (in Django terms, a superuser), identified by the username admin and password adminpass
• Two system users, for applications which authorized to deliver data to specific services. These are:
  • Zorya, a system which creates packages from digitized and legacy born-digital content, identified by the username zorya and API key zoryakey.
  • Aurora, a system which creates packages from born-digital content, identified by the username aurora and the API key aurorakey.

Development

This repository contains a configuration file for git pre-commit hooks which help ensure that code is linted before it is checked into version control. It is strongly recommended that you install these hooks locally by installing pre-commit and running pre-commit install.

License

This code is released under an MIT License.