Contains:

• the public-facing REST API for Notification built on the GOV.UK Notify platform, which teams can integrate with using their clients
• an internal-only REST API built using Flask to manage services, users, templates, etc (this is what the admin app talks to)
• asynchronous workers built using Celery to put things on queues and read them off to be processed, sent to providers, updated, etc

• We currently do not support sending of letters
• We currently do not receive a response if text messages were delivered or not

For any issues during the following instructions, make sure to review the Frequent problems section toward the end of the document.

On OS X:

1. Install PyEnv with Homebrew. This will preserve your sanity.

brew install pyenv

2. Install Python 3.9.1 or whatever is the latest

pyenv install 3.9.1

3. If you expect no conflicts, set 3.9.1 as you default

pyenv global 3.9.1

4. Ensure it installed by running

python --version

if it did not, take a look here: pyenv/pyenv#660

5. Install virtualenv:

pip install virtualenvwrapper

6. Add the following to your shell rc file. ex: .bashrc or .zshrc

source  ~/.pyenv/versions/3.9.1/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh

7. Restart your terminal and make your virtual environtment:

mkvirtualenv -p ~/.pyenv/versions/3.9.1/bin/python notifications-api

8. You can now return to your environment any time by entering

workon notifications-api

9. Install Postgres.app.

10. Create the database for the application

createdb --user=postgres notification_api

11. Install the required environment variables via our LastPast Vault

Within the team's LastPass Vault, you should find corresponding folders for this project containing the .env content that you should copy in your root folder. This will grant the application necessary access to our internal infrastructure.

If you don't have access to our LastPass Vault (as you evaluate our notification platform for example), you will find a sane set of defaults exists in the .env.example file. Copy that file to .env and customize it to your needs.

12. Install all dependencies

pip3 install -r requirements.txt

13. Generate the version file ?!?

make generate-version-file

14. Run all DB migrations

flask db upgrade

15. Run the service

flask run -p 6011 --host=0.0.0.0

15a. To test

pip3 install -r requirements_for_test.txt

make test

scripts/run_celery.sh

scripts/run_celery_sms.sh

scripts/run_celery_beat.sh

This codebase is Python 3 only. At the moment we run 3.9.1 in production. You will run into problems if you try to use Python 3.4 or older.

requirements.txt file is generated from the requirements-app.txt in order to pin versions of all nested dependencies. If requirements-app.txt has been changed (or we want to update the unpinned nested dependencies) requirements.txt should be regenerated with

make freeze-requirements

requirements.txt should be committed alongside requirements-app.txt changes.

Jinja templates used in this repo: email_template.jinja2

Jinja templates are pulled in from the notification-utils repo. To test jinja changes locally (without needing to update the upstream), follow this procedure:

1. Create a jinja_templates folder in the project root directory. This folder name is already gitignored and won't be tracked.

2. Copy the jinja template files from notification-utils into the jinja_templates folder created in step 1

3. Set a new .ENV variable: USE_LOCAL_JINJA_TEMPLATES=True

4. Make markup changes, and see them locally!

5. When finished, copy any changed jinja files back to notification-utils, and push up the PR for your changes in that repo.

6. Remove USE_LOCAL_JINJA_TEMPLATES=True from your .env file, and delete any jinja in jinja_templates. Deleting the folder and jinja files is not required, but recommended. Make sure you're pulling up-to-date jinja from notification-utils the next time you need to make changes.

Problem: No postgres role exists.

Solution: If the command complains you don't have a postgres role existing, execute the following command and retry the above afterward:

createuser -l -s postgres

Problem : E999 SyntaxError: invalid syntax when running flake8

Solution : Check that you are in your correct virtualenv, with python 3.9

Problem:

/bin/sh: 1: Syntax error: "(" unexpected
make: *** [Makefile:31: freeze-requirements] Error 2

when running make freeze-requirements

Solution: Change /bin/sh to /bin/bash in the Makefile

Problem: ImportError: failed to find libmagic. Check your installation

Solution:Install libmagic, ex: brew install libmagic

Problem: assert 'test_notification_api' in db.engine.url.database, 'dont run tests against main db

Solution: Do not specify a database in your .env

Problem: Messages are in the queue but not sending

Solution: Check that celery is running.