• CitizenOS API - https://api.citizenos.com
• Documentation - http://api.citizenos.com/documentation

TOC:

• Running locally
  • Prerequisites
  • Installing
  • Running
  • Testing
  • Debugging
• Contributing
  • Pull requests
• Improvement ideas

• Understand the architecture of CitizenOS platform
• Software
  • Node.JS >= 6.13.1 (https://github.com/mklement0/n-install)
  • PostgreSQL >= 9.5
  • Etherpad-Lite - https://github.com/citizenos/etherpad-lite-heroku. See the README.md and use the config/local.json.example as a basis to get the right plugin configuration.

• Get the source - git clone [email protected]:citizenos/citizenos-api.git
• Go to the source directory - cd citizenos-api
• Install dependencies - npm install
• Add to dev.api.citizenos.com to your hosts file - sudo -- sh -c -e "echo '127.0.0.1 dev.api.citizenos.com' >> /etc/hosts"
• Create the DB:

  sudo su -c "DATABASE_URL=postgres://citizenos:citizenos@localhost:5432/citizenos npm run dbcreate" postgres
  

• Create DB user:
  • NOTE: DO NOT use this in production, you may want different privileges!

  sudo su -c "psql -c \"CREATE USER citizenos WITH PASSWORD 'citizenos'\"" postgres
  sudo su -c "psql -c \"GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE citizenos TO citizenos\"" postgres
  

We use https://github.com/lorenwest/node-config.

Configuration files are in ./config directory.

Order of applying, further down the list overrides value from the sources above it:

• default.json - Global configuration that is same for all environments.
• {process.env.NODE_ENV}.json - Environment specific overrides.
• local.json - Your local configuration that you create your self. This file is for YOUR SPECIFIC overrides, the file is in .gitignore so you don't accidentally commit it.
• ENV - configuration values defined in environment variables. What can be overwritten there, can be read from custom-environment-variables.json

Examples of Citizen OS API configuration: https://github.com/citizenos/citizenos-api/wiki/Configuration

• Start the app - npm start
• By default API is available https://dev.citizenos.com:3003 or over plain HTTP http://dev.api.citizenos.com:3002.

NOTES:

• When using over HTTPS you need to add ./config/certs/citizenosCARoot.pem to your trusted CA certificate store or browsers will complain.

• You need an instance of citizenos-api and etherpad-lite running before you execute tests.
• npm test

• By default logs are in ./logs/app.log

Node.JS runs out of memory. This can be solved by tuning the garbage collection (GC) of Node.JS runtime via V8 options.

• --max-old-space-size - Max size of the old generation (in Mbytes). By default it's 1.5GB. Set it to amount that is maximum that you want Node.JS process to allocate. Example: node --max-old-space-size=250 ./bin/www

Reading:

• All available V8 options - https://gist.github.com/sarupbanskota/a68e8148aa4cdc95e66a1b0e93df48ef

Google+ API is not enabled. Enable Google+ API at https://console.developers.google.com/apis/library/plus.googleapis.com by clicking "ENABLE".

• All pull requests to master branch
• Live site runs on prod branch

DB changes require migrations, please read https://github.com/citizenos/citizenos-api/wiki/DB-Migrations

• Support different authentication and signing methods so that anyone could add their country specifics. That takes us to modular architecture where ideally I would like to add new methods by installing a module and configuring it.
• Generic file storage - don't force the use of AWS as a storage. As a starting point local file storage would be nice for "off the grid" deployments.
• Implement generic "if this, then that" engine where anyone can plug into Topic state changes with their own custom logic. Right now for example Rahvaalgatus.ee has a flow where a signed document is sent to Parliament via e-mail, but this is very region/partner specific.
• Email layout designing should be much simpler. Right now there is hard-coded CitizenOS layout and special layout for Rahvaalgatus.ee. We may consider using MailChimp or other services so that there is a separate service where mails are designed and sent and for which each Partner pays themselves.
• ...