Rat

🐀 Rat

The 🐀 is configuration manager mediator that is capable of importing data from different sources.
Currently: JSON file, MongoDb and/or evnironment variables with goal to extend that support towrads: Consul, ETCD, MS SQL other 🐀 instance(s) and probable some other sources.

Motivation

Maintaing and handling configuration is one of more tedious and at some point complex problems that you need to resolve when building your application(s). Even if you have just one application the amount of configuration can be huge, or it can be just couple of keys and a connection string that after a few years become a page that requires a documentation!
Now there are many ways to store your configuration entries if the file is becoming to cumbersome, you could just store it in the database and be done with it, or go with enterprise solutions like Consul or ETCD. Consul even offers you a very nice UI for managing your configuration keys.
So, why yet another configuration manager?
Because of need for something simple - yet very extendable.
Something that can have a lifecycle of a "simple" API.
Something that is capable of importing configurations from different sources: files, databases, KV stores or even other APIs.
Something that can fit into an already matured environment that has lots of different services: legacy, old and new that are going to be built.
Something that will not require extra work, or huge refactoring in order to become a single source of truth.

So, that's how the idea for 🐀 came to life.

Build

To build this project you can open it in Visual Studio and just build the solution, or run: dotnet build from src folder.

Note: If you don't have .net 5 SDK installed you can download it here

Test

Test can be ran either through Visual Studio, or by running: dotnet test from src folder

Note: By default test are running agains SqlLite database. Check 'Choosing the database` section on how to switch to PostGre/SqlServer database

Chosing the database

Test suite supprots two database types:

1. SqlLite
2. PostGre/SqlServer

Using SqlLite

SqlLite is the default database

Using PostGre/SqlServer

To run test against SqlServer database use command: dotnet test -e DATABASE_ENGINE=sqlserver/postgre.
Alternatively DATABASE_ENGINE variable can be added as an OS variable and then only dotnet test can be used.

Run locally

In root folder there is a docker-compose file which will start Rat and SqlServer. Rat is configured to wait for SqlServer to become healthy before it starts.

If you don't want to run Rat from a Docker container you can run it from your local machine and to do so you will need to:

1. Navigate to: \src\Rat.Api\bin\Debug\net5.0\ or \src\Rat.Api\bin\Release\net5.0\
2. Run: dotnet Rat.Api.dll

How to create the database

Rat is using EF Core Migrations to manage the database lifecycle and for local development database will be created or updated automatically on application start.
Do note, that this behavior is exclusive to local development and it is controlled with ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT variable. To have it turned on ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT needs to have value: Development (value set in docker-compose file).

Note: When running from local maching ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT variable can be set using launchSetting.json located in: src\Rat.Api folder.

Healthchecks

Livenes probe can be reached at: /health/live Readiness probe can be reached at: /health/ready

Swagger

Rat uses Swashbuckle.AspNetCore to generate Api documentation.
Swagger can be accessed at /swagger.

Authentication

Rat uses Auth0 as an authentication provided and each request excluding healthchecks expects an Authorization header with a Bearer token.