FingertipsNext

FingerTipsNext is the next version of Fingertips, a comprehensive public health data collection platform managed by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) in the UK.

Starting the Application Locally

A Docker compose definition is provided (see compose.yaml) to allow the individual application containers to be run locally.

To build the application containers you will need Docker installed: https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/. You will also need to copy the .env.template file to one called .env and populate the DB_PASSWORD environment variable with a password value that meets the SQL Server password policy.

Once Docker is installed and the .env file is in place, you can start the whole application with the following command:

docker compose --profile all up --build --remove-orphans -d

This will build and then start the containers in the background. You can view the frontend application at http://localhost:3000/ and the API at http://localhost:5144/.

It is also possible to start a subset of the application's containers using Docker's support for profiles. The following profiles have been defined:

Profile Name	Services Included
all	All application services
frontend	The frontend application
api	The API application & database
db	The SQL Server database

You can start a specific profile by providing the --profile <profile_name> argument to the docker compose command. For example the following command will start only the API:

docker compose --profile api up --build -d

Finally, you can stop all of the running containers with the following command, where <profile_name> is the profile name you provided to the up command:

docker compose --profile <profile_name> down

Mock AI Search Data

The system uses Azure AI Search for finding indicators and geographies. When not running against a deployed environment then a MOCK is built into the system to reply with some static data.

The Mock is enabled in the frontend app using the following environment variable. DHSC_AI_SEARCH_USE_MOCK_SERVICE=true

This is set in:

• fingertips-frontend/.env.development so that it is used when the nextjs app is run in dev mode
• compose.yaml so that it is set when the frontend container is started
• ci.yml so that it is set when the frontend is run in CI
• fingertips-frontend-deploy.yml as a temporary measure until the Azure AI search is configured
• fingertips-frontend/Dockerfile as it is currently needed at build time (this may be refactored away)

To enable the system to connect to the Azure AI Search the following environment variables will need to be configured.

• DHSC_AI_SEARCH_SERVICE_URL="https://<subdomain>.search.windows.net"
• DHSC_AI_SEARCH_API_KEY=<the read only api key for the AI Search instance>

Making Changes to the Application

There are several components to the application:

• The frontend, a Next.js application which provides the UI
• The api, a .NET application which provides the API layer
• The database project, a SQL Server Database Project that defines the database structure
• The terraform, which provides the Infrastructure as Code used to deploy the application to Azure

Each component directory has a README.md file providing details of how to contribute to it.

Workflows

Workflows are provided for building and deploying the Fingertips application. These workflows are implemented using Github Actions and can be found in .github/workflows/.

The Continuous Integration Workflow

The continuous integration (CI) workflow performs automated checks on the various components of the application and then builds them and publishes the resulting containers to a container registry. It is is defined in .github/workflows/ci.yml.

Pre-requisites

In order to run the CI workflow you must have the following variables set for your Github Action:

Variable Name	Description
CONTAINER_REGISTRY	The domain of the container registry to push images to. E.g. registryname.azurecr.io

You must also set the following secrets:

Secret Name	Description
CONTAINER_REGISTRY_USERNAME	The username to use when authenticating to the container registry defined in the CONTAINER_REGISTRY variable.
CONTAINER_REGISTRY_PASSWORD	The password to use when authenticating to the container registry defined in the CONTAINER_REGISTRY variable.

API Design First & OpenAPI Development

The approach we are taking with the API is 'design first'. The API is designed before it is coded using the OpenAPI 3.0 standard and then that design is implemented in the .NET web API. The API design can also be used to help develop the website. A swagger.yaml file is the API design artifact and defines how the API should look. To make changes to the yaml file you can either edit the file directly (fine for smaller changes) or use a visual editor (handy for major changes). A useful visual editor is SwaggerHub, which has a free tier. There is a handy VS Code extension OpenAPI Editor which makes editing the yaml file easier and highlights any issues.