Netguru

This contains a solution of the Netguru's recruiment task.

Please read the notes.

Local development

To install the application, you check it out from the repo and do:

docker-compose up --build -d run_local
docker exec -it netguru_run_local_1 bash
python manage.py migrate
python manage.py createsuperuser --username admin --email admin@example.com

This will load schema for PostgreSQL and create a superuser. Don't worry if error messages appear about not being able to bind to the socket

• this is perfectly fine and normal. Provide your own password and you're good to go!

Just take care that your generated links will contain the https schema - you should substitute it with http. I did it because you shouldn't expose non-secured HTTP to the world, and you should always terminate SSL there (get a free cert from Let's Encrypt if you're short on cash).

This will expose both ports 80 (for TCP traffic) and ports 81 (for metrics) on localhost.

To unit test locally, just run:

docker-compose up -d unittest

Production

I expect you to terminate SSL at a reverse proxy. Please watch out for generated links, as they will invariable link to SSL, because I've got no easy way to detect if I've been called with SSL already, or is it just a reverse proxy handing over the requests.

Deployment

Deployment is handled automatically via a CI script.

Deployment is done to a Docker Swarm platform, since I'm a big fan, and I'm still learning Kubernetes.

I realize that Docker Swarm is a dead end, as it isn't supported anymore, but I've got 1,5-FTE worth of jobs on my hands.

Configuration

You need to provide your settings in following environment variables:

• DB_HOST (default is postgres)
• DB_USER (default is postgres)
• DB_PASS (default is postgres)
• DB_NAME (default is postgres)
• DB_PORT (default is 5432)

You should also pick a env called SECRET_KEY it should be a random sequence of characters. If you don't provide it, a reasonably default value is supplied, but since it has already been used it isn't safe anymore. CHANGE IT!

You also need to provide a list of hosts from which this Django instance can be accessed. You do that by defining an environment variable called ALLOWED_HOSTS and giving a list of hosts separated by a comma. If you don't define it, a default value of * will be used

WARNING!! This is not secure, don't do it!

Volumes

The application needs a volume marked at /data to store files. Because storing files in a database is an antipattern.

Monitoring

Logs

You will just have to forgive me that I failed to hook up any loggers for it. Any Python-based logger will do, I sincerely recommends seq-log

• full disclosure: I'm a contributor there

Metrics

The solution actively exports metrics at port 81. You can hook up Prometheus to it. It exports the metrics thanks to my excellent satella library and django-satella-metrics adapter.

Traces

The solution fully supports tracing. You can tweak the settings in settings.py file to install for example a Jaeger instance.

I failed to deploy that on your test environment since I'm pretty much strapped for time.

BTW: If you're not already doing tracing, you should totally consider it.