AskGov

Answers from the Singapore Government

Tech Stack

Front-end

• Front-end Framework: React
• Styling: SASS switching to Chakra UI

Back-end

• For handling server requests: Node.js with Express.js Framework
• Database: MySQL

Prerequisites

Node, NPM

Git

Docker

direnv

Optionally VSCode with extension ESLint

Optionally DBeaver to view database with GUI

Setup

• Make a copy of .env.example and name it .env

• Hook direnv onto your appropriate shell. Load the environment variables:

  direnv allow .
  

• Install and audit node dependencies

  npm install
  
  npm run audit-dep
  

• Spin up docker containers (this will create the askgov database):

  docker-compose up
  

• Create tables in database:

  npm run seq-cli db:migrate
  

• Seed the database with a sample dataset:

  npm run seq-cli db:seed:all
  

• Run search_entries index backfill script for OpenSearch integration:

  cd server/src/bootstrap && npx ts-node search-backfill-trigger.ts
  

• To verify that the search_entries index has been successfully built, run curl -HEAD 'https://localhost:9200/search_entries' --insecure -u 'admin:admin'

• Optional: Use Dbeaver to connect to the local MySQL server at 127.0.0.1:3306, using the username and password in .env

• Check that your Database ER Diagram looks like this:

• Stop docker compose (npm run dev will spin it up again):

docker-compose stop

Running in Development

• Start running frontend, backend, maildev, localstack and mysql simultaneously (requires Docker)

  npm run dev
  

  Alternatively, to run individually:

  # for supporting services
  docker-compose up
  
  # for backend server only
  npm run build-shared && npm run server
  
  # for frontend server only
  npm run client
  

  Frontend server accessible on localhost:3000

  Backend server accessible on localhost:6174/api/v1

  Local mail server MailDev accessible on localhost:1080

• Default home page is not authorised. To become authorised user, login via localhost:3000/login, enter enquiries@was.gov.sg. Then go to the mail server to obtain the OTP

• To view UI components on storybook (accessible on localhost:6006): npm run storybook

Common Problems

SQL Related

• Password Auth Error

  Ensure .env is correct and check it is sourced by either direnv or do

  source .env
  

• Public Key Retrieval Not Allowed

  Change allowPublicKeyRetrieval=true on DBeaver

• Client does not support authentication protocol requested by server; consider upgrading MySQL client

  Execute the following query in your database GUI

  ALTER USER 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY 'password'
  

  Where root as your user, localhost as your URL and password as your password

  Then run this query to refresh privileges:

  flush privileges;
  

  Try connecting using node after you do so.

  If that doesn't work, try it without @'localhost' part.

Node.js Related

• Error: error:0308010C:digital envelope routines::unsupported

  Try using Node.js 16.

OpenSearch Related

• If you need to delete search_entries index, run curl -XDELETE 'https://localhost:9200/search_entries' --insecure -u 'admin:admin'

SQLite-related error during npm i

npm ERR! command failed
npm ERR! command sh -c node-pre-gyp install --fallback-to-build
npm ERR! CC(target) Release/obj.target/nothing/../node-addon-api/nothing.o
npm ERR!   LIBTOOL-STATIC Release/nothing.a
npm ERR!   ACTION deps_sqlite3_gyp_action_before_build_target_unpack_sqlite_dep Release/obj/gen/sqlite-autoconf-3340000/sqlite3.c
npm ERR! Failed to execute 

• SQLite error during npm i. Since macOS 12.3, python2 is not supported anymore but the bundled sqlite3 tar file contains calls to a hardcoded python command. Simplest fix is to run: npm config set python python3.

API Endpoints

Base Url - http://localhost:6174/api/v1

Agencies

• GET /agencies?<longname, shortname>
• GET /agencies/:agencyId

Auth

• GET /auth
• POST /auth/verifyotp
• POST /auth/sendotp
• POST /auth/logout

Users

• POST /users/:id
• GET /users/:id

Posts

• GET /posts
• GET /posts/top
• GET /posts/tag/:tagname
• GET /posts/:id
• POST /posts/
• DELETE /posts/:id

Answers

• GET /posts/answers/:id
• POST /posts/answers/:id
• PUT /posts/answers/:id
• DELETE /posts/answers/:id

Tags

• GET /tags
• GET /tags/user
• GET /tags/agency/:agencyId
• GET /tags/:tagname