ChurchConnect API

Development

• Software requirements (most easily installed using SDKMAN):
  • JAVA 8
  • Grails (see gradle.properties for the version to install).
• Clone the API. Repo link.
• customize the Contentful configuration in application.yml:
  • the spaceID can be found by looking at the url when logged into contentful and working in your space.
  • the read apiURL will have the format: https://cdn.contentful.com/spaces/{spaceID}
  • the write apiURL will have the format: https://api.contentful.com/spaces/{spaceID}
  • create a read api key by going th the "APIs" tab of your contentful space and adding an API key.
  • create a write api key by going to https://www.contentful.com/developers/docs/references/authentication/#the-management-api
    • Click on the "Login to get a token" button
    • Authorize the application
    • Copy the key that is generated.

Below is a sample of how the configs will look in the application.yml file:

environments:
    development:
        church:
             contentful:
                 read:
                     apiURL: https://cdn.contentful.com/spaces/xxxxxxxxxxxx
                     apiKey: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
                 write:
                     apiURL: https://api.contentful.com/spaces/xxxxxxxxxxxx
                     apiKey: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

• Once configured, run the API with grails run

Building and deploying:

We deploy the API to an AWS Elastic Beanstalk environment, configured as follows:

• Tomcat application
• choose a t2.micro instance type
• In software configuration:
  • Max JVM Heap: 768m
  • Max permanent generation: 128m
• Set up environment variables for the contentful connections (see above for how to get these values):
  • church.contentful.read.apiKey
  • church.contentful.read.apiURL
  • church.contentful.write.apiKey
  • church.contentful.write.apiURL
• You can verify that the API is running by going to /metadata on the application.

Once you have a Beanstalk, you will need to generate and upload a war file.

• grails war will instruct grails to build the application into a war file.
• the resulting artifact is stored in build/libs/.
• We recommend putting at least the date in each war file name to distinguish builds.
• upload and deploy the renamed file as a new application version in beanstalk.

Successful builds of this open source project will be dropped into a public S3 bucket.