Service Catalog

A simple dockerized service catalog restful backend using NestJs, TypeORM, TypeScript and PostgreSQL

Features

• user management and JWT auth;
• service catalog CRUD function, supporting filtering, sorting, searching and pagination;
• fine-graded permission / access control;
• healthcheck endpoint and OpenAPI swagger doc;

Running the app

docker-compose up -d

• the catalog application is exposed on localhost port 3000;
• sign up via /auth/signup using admin as the username to be the admin; any other usernames will be normal users; - get the access token via /auth/signin;
• add the Authorization with the access token header to each request to further explore the application;
• all the credentials can be found here .env

API endpoints

for more information, please check catalog-api doc

Endpoint	Description
http://localhost:3000/doc	api swagger doc
http://localhost:3000	healthcheck
http://localhost:3000/auth/signup	user sign up
http://localhost:3000/auth/signin	user sign in
http://localhost:3000/service	POST to add a service
http://localhost:3000/service/:id	GET a service
http://localhost:3000/service/:id	DELETE a service
http://localhost:3000/service/:id	UPDATE a service
http://localhost:3000/service/	GET a list of services, supporting basic pagination
http://localhost:3000/service/search	search a list of services, supporting filtering, sorting, pagination
http://localhost:3000/permission/grant	grant a user to access a service
http://localhost:3000/permission/remove	remove a user from accessing a service
http://localhost:3000/permission	GET a list of services that allows to be accessed for the current user
http://localhost:3000/permission/:id	GET a list of services that allows to be accessed for the given user

Design

The service catalog api was designed for small- and medium-sized enterprises.

Function design

It contains 3 major features/functions:

• auth: user management
• permission: fine-graded permission management
• service: service catalog management

Architectural design

Constricted by time, all the above 3 functions are built into one application and dockerized together with postgres database.

Another possible architectural design for large enterprises

For large enterprises, the above 3 features/functions can be optionally separated into 3 applications with their own persistent layers.

Authentication/Authorization

For the service catalog endpoints, there few layers of access control:

• all the endpoint requires JWT auth;

• admin users have the full access to the all the services;

• for normal users, the fine-graded permission (the permission endpoint) plays a role here.

  1. all the users can have the full access to the services added by themselves;
  2. services created a different users can only be accessed after the permission being granted by admin users;
  3. When retrieving a list of services, only permitted services are exposed.
  4. The fine-graded permission is implemented by NestJS interceptors;

Additional considerations

• This is a weekend POC project and the author has never been previously exposed to NestJS. Reading NextJS documentation and coding happened within a very short period and there are tons of points to be improved for production purpose;
• The project needs more tests (need more time) and ideally, a pipeline should be included/setup for CI/CD;