Data Collection App

This is the codebase for the Ruby/Rails app that will handle the submission of Lettings and Sales of Social Housing in England data.

Required Setup

Pre-requisites

• Ruby
• Rails
• Postgres

Setup Quickstart

Copy the .env.example to .env and replace the database credentials with your local postgres user credentials.

Install the dependencies bundle install

Create the database rake db:create

Run the database migrations rake db:migrate

Start the rails server

rails s

This starts the rails server on localhost:3000

or using Docker

docker-compose build
docker-compose run --rm app rails db:create
docker-compose up

This exposes the rails server on localhost:8080.

Note docker-compose runs the production docker image (RAILS_ENV=production) as the Dockerfile doesn't include development gems to keep the image size down.

Infrastructure

This application is running on Gov PaaS. To deploy you need to:

• Contact your organisation manager to get an account in dluhc-core organization and in the relevant spaces (sandbox/production).

• Install the cloudfoundry cli https://docs.cloudfoundry.org/cf-cli/install-go-cli.html

• Login
  cf login -a api.london.cloud.service.gov.uk -u <your_username>

• Set your deployment target (sandbox/production)
  cf target -o dluhc-core -s <deploy_environment>

• Deploy
  cf push dluhc-core --strategy rolling. This will use the manifest file

Once the app is deployed:

• Get a rails console
  cf ssh dluhc-core -t -c "/tmp/lifecycle/launcher /home/vcap/app 'rails console' ''"

CI/CD

When a commit is made to main the following Github action jobs are triggered:

1. Test - RSpec runs our test suite
2. Deploy - If the Test stage passes, this deploys the app to our Gov PaaS account using the cloudfoundry cli

When a pull request is opened to main only the test stage runs.

Single log submission

The form for this is driven by a json file in /config/forms/{start_year}_{end_year}.json

The JSON should follow the structure:

{
  form_type: [lettings/sales]
  start_year: yyyy
  end_year: yyyy
  sections: {
    snake case section name string: {
      label: string,
      subsections: {
        snake case subsection name string: {
          label: string,
          pages: {
            snake case page name string: {
              header: string,
              description: string,
              questions: {
                snake case question name string: {
                  header: string,
                  hint_text: string,
                  type: [text / numeric / radio / checkbox / date ],
                  min: integer, (numeric only),
                  max: integer, (numeric only),
                  step: integer (numeric only),
                  answer_options: { (checkbox and radio only)
                    "0": string,
                    "1": string
                  }
                }
              }
            }
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Assumptions made by the format:

• All forms have at least 1 section
• All sections have at least 1 subsection
• All subsections have at least 1 page
• All pages have at least 1 question
• The ActiveRecord case log model has a field for each question name (must match)
• Text not required by a page/question such as a header or hint text should be passed as an empty string

Useful documentation (external dependencies)

DfE Form Builder Gem

• Examples
• Technical Docs
• GitHub repository

Alpha Gov UK frontend gem

• GitHub repository

Hotwire (Turbo/Stimulus)

• Docs