Appropriate default for JOB_CONFIGURATION_FILE

[sbliven]

Appropriate default for JOB_CONFIGURATION_FILE

Summary

SciCat should have an appropriate default job configuration.

Current Behaviour

The job configuration file is read from the JOB_CONFIGURATION_FILE. It currently defaults to (src/config/configuration.ts:47):

  const jobConfigurationFile =
    process.env.JOB_CONFIGURATION_FILE ||
    ("src/jobs/config/jobConfig.example.json" as string);

This was convenient for development, but should now be set to a secure final value.

Expected Behaviour

I would say that the default behavior when JOB_CONFIGURATION_FILE is unset should be to look for "jobConfig.json" in the current directory. This mirrors the location for functionalAccounts.json. If the file is not found it should be treated as an empty config, eg

{
  "configVersion": "",
  "jobs": []
}

If #1120 is implemented then Scicat checks for ./jobConfig.{json,yaml,yml} and uses the first one found.

If JOB_CONFIGURATION_FILE is set then it is loaded. An error should be thrown if the file is not found.

[sbliven]

This was resolved by #1539, but with slightly different behavior. If JOB_CONFIGURATION_FILE is omitted then it doesn't configure any jobs. Thus any request to POST /jobs will lead to an unknown job type error.

If you want to configure the job system, it is required to set JOB_CONFIGURATION_FILE=jobConfig.yaml manually. The file extension is ignored, with either JSON or YAML content supported.