Developping the API

Launching the stack

If you have completed the Getting started with Surveil tutorial, you should know how to launch the stack:

sudo docker-compose up

Editing the code

The Surveil container mounts your local project folder and pecan reloads every time the project files change thus providing a proper development environment.

For example, edit the surveil/api/controllers/v2/hello.py file and change Hello World! by Hello Devs!.

After you save the file, the following logs will appear in Surveil’s output:

surveil_1  | Some source files have been modified
surveil_1  | Restarting server...

You should be able to test your modification by accessing http://localhost:5311/v2/hello with your browser.

Disabling permissions

Depending on what you are working on, it might be practical to disable permissions. This can be done by editing the policy.json file found at etc/surveil/policy.json.

For example, you could modify the following lines:

"admin_required": "role:admin or is_admin:1",
"surveil_required": "role:surveil or rule:admin_required",

"surveil:admin": "rule:admin_required",
"surveil:authenticated": "rule:surveil_required",

by:

"admin_required": "@",
"surveil_required": "@",

"surveil:admin": "@",
"surveil:authenticated": "@",

This will modify permissions so that all API calls that require the admin rule now pass without any verification.

Developping the API without docker

You can get development environment without docker

git clone https://review.openstack.org/stackforge/surveil
cd surveil
virtualenv env
source env/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt
python setup.py develop
python setup.py install_data
surveil-api -p env/etc/surveil/config.py -a env/etc/surveil/api_paste.ini -c env/etc/surveil/surveil.cfg -r

Edit your config files

vim env/etc/surveil/config.py
vim env/etc/surveil/surveil.cfg
vim env/etc/surveil/policy.json
vim env/etc/surveil/api_paste.ini

Don’t forget to start your databases (MongoDB and InfluxDB)