Granite

This is a monorepo for granite, an online consent management platform.

Getting Started

1. Clone the repo: git clone [email protected]:nicolaspearson/granite.git
2. Install Yarn2
3. Switch to the latest stable version: yarn set version stable
4. Install dependencies: yarn install
5. Ensure that you have docker installed and running.

Optionally install yamllint:

brew install yamllint

Note: Required if you are a contributor.

Configure Visual Studio Code

1. Download and install Visual Studio Code
2. Open the project
3. Install the extensions listed in .vscode/extensions.json
4. Switch to the granite workspace by opening .vscode/granite.code-workspace, and clicking on the "Open Workspace" button.

Project Overview

This is a monorepo project, which means it allows multiple packages (workspaces) in a single repository. The packages are divided into the following domains:

• backend: Backend packages and support packages.
• frontend: Frontend packages and support packages.
• shared: Support packages that are common between the frontend and backend packages.

Tech Stack

This repository uses:

• docker
• expressjs
• nestjs
• typescript
• yarn2

Configuration Files

• .dockerignore: ignores the listed files and directories when using the docker COPY command.
• .eslintignore: ignores the listed files and directories when running ESLint.
• .eslintrc.js: defines the global ESLint configuration.
• .pnp.cjs: automatically generated by Yarn2.
• .prettierignore: ignores the listed files and directories when running Prettier.
• .prettierrc: defines the global Prettier configuration.
• .yarnrc.yaml: yarn2 configuration.
  • fix dependencies with package extensions
• docker-compose.yaml: defines docker image for local testing
• jest.config.js: defines the global Jest configuration which is inherited by each package.
• tsconfig.json: defines the global TypeScript configuration which is inherited by each package.

Development Tools

• commitlint: to enforce the conventional commit style.
• husky: commit hooks that run commitlint, yarn and prettier to ensure quality before pushing.
• eslint: JavaScript and TypeScript linter.
• prettier: code auto formatter.

Yarn2

This monorepo takes advantage of new Yarn 2 features, e.g. Plug 'n Play and zero-installs, to prevent traditional problems caused by such setups.

Project configuration:

• Common devDependencies to all packages are defined as dependencies in the root package.json.
• Common scripts are defined in the root package.json, all packages can inherit them.
• Each package has its own specific scripts, dependencies and devDependencies.
• There is no node_modules directory, dependencies are committed to the repo via .yarn/cache. This greatly speeds up CI builds when the monorepo starts to grow.

svc-consents

The preference / consent management service. Unit and integration test coverage for this package is locked in at 100%.

Building, Running, and Testing the Package

# Build the package
yarn workspace svc-consents build

# Lint the package
yarn workspace svc-consents lint

# Start the service in dev mode
yarn workspace svc-consents start:dev

# Execute the unit tests for the package
yarn workspace svc-consents test:unit

# Execute the integration tests for the package
yarn workspace svc-consents test:integration

The project can also be built and started using docker:

Note: Using docker will start the services in production mode, which excludes database fixtures.

# Build the package using docker
yarn workspace svc-consents docker:build

# Build and start the package using docker
yarn workspace svc-consents docker:start

# Attach to the docker logs for the package
yarn workspace svc-consents docker:logs

Continuous Integration

There are 4 jobs in the continuous integration workflow for this package (.github/workflows/backend.svc-consents.yaml):

1. Build and lint the package.
2. Run the unit tests.
3. Run the integration tests.
4. Build the docker image and upload it to the Github docker registry (only on the main branch).

Swagger

Swagger documentation is served on localhost. Requests can be executed directly from the Swagger user interface. The example documentation contains valid fixtures that are automatically populated on application start-up.

REST API

This directory contains a REST client file that allows developers to execute REST calls from visual studio code. Alternatively use the Swagger user interface.

• Install the REST client extension for vscode: humao.rest-client.
• Execute requests from the consents.http file.

API Architecture

The section serves to describe the RESTful endpoints, and in some cases why the implementation diverges from the requirements in the code challenge.

I implemented an authentication flow to ensure that only an authorized user is allowed to interact with their data. There are pre-populated fixtures in the database which can be used for testing purposes:

{
  "email": "[email protected]",
  "password": "myS3cretP@55w0rd!"
}

Improvements

A list of possible improvements:

• Check password strength in the password validator.
• Use redis to whitelist JWT's (described in the delete endpoint section below).
• Add architecture diagrams.
• Document authentication, event, and user flows using mermaid.js.

POST /v1/consents/users/registration (unauthenticated)

Description:

Registers a new user in the database. An email address and password must be provided.

A user accepts only one required field (email) that must be a valid email address and unique. If any of the requirements are not satisfied, the API must return a 422 response.

I deviated from the requirement above, and instead return a 400 due to the reasons documented below.

Exceptions:

• A 400 is returned if an invalid email address is provided or the password contains illegal characters, is too short or too long.
• A 400 is also returned if the user already exists. This was done in order to avoid user enumeration attacks on an unauthenticated endpoint.
• A 500 is returned if an unexpected error occurs.

Sample response:

{
  "id": "343c6ac5-2b72-4c41-a9eb-28f5ae49af80",
  "email": "[email protected]",
  "consents": []
}

POST /v1/consents/auth/login (unauthenticated)

Description:

Authenticates a user and returns a JWT which can be used to interact with the authenticated endpoints.

Exceptions:

• A 400 is returned if an invalid email address is provided or the password contains illegal characters, is too short or too long.
• A 404 is returned if the user does not exist.
• A 404 is also returned if the user provides invalid credentials. This was done in order to avoid user enumeration attacks on an unauthenticated endpoint.
• A 500 is returned if an unexpected error occurs.

Sample response:

{
  "token": "<REDACTED>"
}

POST /v1/consents/events (authenticated)

Description:

Creates a new consent event for the authenticated user.

Exceptions:

• A 400 is returned if the request payload does not pass the validation rules. The id must be either email_notifications or sms_notifications, and enabled must be a boolean.
• A 401 is returned if the user does not provide a valid JWT in the authorization header.
• A 422 is returned if the user does not exist.
• A 500 is returned if an unexpected error occurs.

Sample response:

{
  "user": {
    "id": "343c6ac5-2b72-4c41-a9eb-28f5ae49af80"
  },
  "consents": [
    {
      "id": "email_notifications",
      "enabled": true
    }
  ]
}

GET /v1/consents/health (unauthenticated)

Description:

A generic health check endpoint that indicates whether or not the service is up.

Exceptions:

None.

Sample response:

{
  "status": "OK"
}

GET /v1/consents/user (authenticated)

Description:

Retrieves the authenticated user's profile. It was assumed that only the latest version of each event type should be included, e.g. if a user has 5 email_notifications, and 2 sms_notifications events only the last entry for each will be returned.

Exceptions:

• A 401 is returned if the user does not provide a valid JWT in the authorization header.
• A 404 is returned if the user does not exist.
• A 500 is returned if an unexpected error occurs.

Sample response:

{
  "id": "343c6ac5-2b72-4c41-a9eb-28f5ae49af80",
  "email": "[email protected]",
  "consents": [
    {
      "id": "email_notifications",
      "enabled": true
    }
  ]
}

DELETE /v1/consents/user (authenticated)

Description:

Deletes the authenticated user from the database.

After the user is deleted their JWT will still be valid. As an improvement I would use redis to whitelist JWT's, when a user is deleted their JWT's would be removed from the whitelist. An additional step would be added to the JwtAuthGuard that will do a lookup in redis to ensure the provided JWT exists before allowing a request to proceed.

Exceptions:

• A 401 is returned if the user does not provide a valid JWT in the authorization header.
• A 500 is returned if an unexpected error occurs.

Sample response:

Returns a 204 if the user was successfully deleted.

Database

This package uses TypeORM and PostgreSQL.

Migrations

To generate the missing migrations TypeORM applies existing migrations, and uses the diff between the database schema and the TypeORM entities to create a migration file.

# Replace <MigrationName> with a descriptive name for the generated migration
yarn workspace svc-consents db:migration:generate:missing <MigrationName>

Structure

The database structure can be seen below (documented using mermaid.js):

erDiagram
    USER {
        uuid uuid
        string email
        string password
        date created_at
        date updated_at
    }
    USER ||--o{ EVENT : userUuid
    EVENT {
        integer id
        string type
        boolean enabled
        date created_at
        uuid userUuid
    }

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