Cat Things

Cat things is a lightweight inventory control system developed for the CAT. Cat things will keep track of inventory levels, track usage trends, create shopping lists, and send alerts on low inventory.

API install instructions

1. Prerequisite: node.js must be installed on your machine before proceeding

2. Open a console and navigate to the THINGS/API/things-api directory then execute

   npm install

3. Create a file in API/things-api/conf/db/db_info.js

4. Add the following lines

   exports.config = {  
     user: 'username', //env var: PGUSER
     database: 'databasename', //env var: PGDATABASE  
     password: 'secret',  //env var: PGPASSWORD
     host: 'hostname',  // Server hosting the postgres database
     port: 5432,  //env var: PGPORT
     max: 10,  // max number of clients in the pool
     idleTimeoutMillis: 30000,  // how long a client is allowed to remain idle before being closed
   };  

5. Fill in the proper data to connect to your database.

6. Create a self-signed SSL certificate: (Prerequisite: openssl installed via npm insall -g openssl) Execute the following from the things-api directory:

   mkdir conf/ssl
   cd conf/ssl
   openssl genrsa -des3 -passout pass:x -out server.pass.key 2048
   
   openssl rsa -passin pass:x -in server.pass.key -out server.key
   rm server.pass.key
   openssl req -new -key server.key -out server.csr
   

   fill out the fields when prompted. leave the optional fields blank. then execute the following:

   openssl x509 -req -sha256 -days 365 -in server.csr -signkey server.key -out server.crt
   rm server.csr
   chmod 600 ./*

7. Create a key to sign your json web tokens: create a file called things-api/conf/jwtSecret.key wite 256 bytes of random data to the file. this is easily done from an online random number generator and copy pasted in. this link will give you a random 256 bytes, just copy it into the file. https://www.random.org/cgi-bin/randbyte?nbytes=256&format=h or execute the following command:

   dd if=/dev/urandom of=./conf/jwtSecret.key bs=256 count=1

8. Create a new file in API/things-api/conf/mailopt.js.

9. Add the following lines

   exports.mail = {  
   from: '"name" <email-address>', // sender address
   to: 'destination' // list of receivers
   };  

   Where name is the name of the sender, email-address is their e-mail, and destination is the address to send the e-mail to.

10. Create another new file in API/things-api/conf/email_auth.js.

11. Add the following lines

    exports.auth = {  
    user: "sender",
    pass: "pw"
    };  

    Where sender is the e-mail address used to send e-mails about requests and inventory updates, and pw is the password to the account.

12. Open API/things-api/Front_End/templates/js/services/thingsAPI.js and edit line 26 as follows:

    var _urlBase = 'https://<YOUR_DOMAIN_HERE>:<YOUR_PORT>/api/';

13. Launch the server from the things-api directory with

    npm start --port 3000

    you may specify the port with the --port flag

this section should be updated regularly