GDS API Adapters

A set of API adapters to work with the GDS APIs.

Example usage:

require 'gds_api/rummager'
rummager = GdsApi::Rummager.new(Plek.new.find('rummager'))
results = rummager.search(q: "taxes")

Example adapters for frequently used applications:

Logging

Each HTTP request can be logged as JSON. Example:

{
“request_uri”:“http://contactotron.platform/contacts/1”,
“start_time”:1324035128.9056342,
“status”:“success”,
“end_time”:1324035129.2017104
}

By default we log to a NullLogger since we don’t want to pollute your test
results or logs. To log output you’ll want to set GdsApi::Base.logger to
something that actually logs:

GdsApi::Base.logger = Logger.new("/path/to/file.log")

Setting the timeout

By default the JsonClient timeout is set to 4 seconds. If this is exceeded a
GdsApi::TimedOutException will be raised. Individual clients may decide to
override this timeout. Alternatively, you can override this in the application
that uses the adapter with:

Services.publishing_api.client.options[:timeout] = number_of_seconds

In most cases, there is an upper-limit of 30 seconds imposed by the app server
or Nginx. If your requests are taking this long, you should probably be looking
into other options to lower the response time.

Middleware for request tracing

We set a unique header at the cache level called Govuk-Request-Id, and also
set a header called Govuk-Original-Url to identify the original URL
requested. If apps make API requests in order to serve a user’s request, they
should pass on these headers, so that requests can be traced across the entire
GOV.UK stack.

The GdsApi::GovukHeaderSniffer middleware takes care of this. This gem
contains a railtie that configures this middleware for Rails apps without extra
effort. Other Rack-based apps should opt-in by adding these lines to your
config.ru:

use GdsApi::GovukHeaderSniffer, ‘HTTP_GOVUK_REQUEST_ID’
use GdsApi::GovukHeaderSniffer, ‘HTTP_GOVUK_ORIGINAL_URL’

Middleware for identifying authenticated users

Applications can make use of user-based identification for additional
authorisation when making API requests. Any application that is using gds-sso
for authentication can set an additional header called
‘X-Govuk-Authenticated-User’ to identify the currently authenticated user ID.
This will automatically be picked up by the GdsApi::GovukHeaderSniffer
middleware in Rails applications and sent with API requests so that the
downstream service can optionally use the identifier to perform authorisation
on the request. This will be used by content-store as a mechanism to only
return access-limited content to authenticated and authorised users.

Test Helpers

There are also test helpers for stubbing various requests in other apps.

See all the test helpers in lib/gds_api/test_helpers.

Dependencies

Some of the helpers come with additional dependencies that you’ll need to
have installed and configured in your consuming app/lib.

At time of writing, these are:

WebMock

Documentation

See RubyDoc for some limited documentation.

To run a Yard server locally to preview documentation, run:

$ bundle exec yard server –reload

Licence

Released under the MIT Licence, a copy of which can be found in the file
LICENCE.

Modules

Classes