APRd (Artsy Real-time Dashboard)

APRd (aka. APR dashboard), is a real-time dashboard built in Elixir on Phoenix Framework. For it's real-time dashboard it's using Phoenix Live View to be able to provide websocket based pages that can update in real-time based on updates on the server side.

Meta

• State: production
• Production: https://aprd.artsy.net
• Staging: https://aprd-staging.artsy.net
• GitHub: https://github.com/artsy/aprd/
• CI: CircleCI; merged PRs to artsy/apr-dashboard#main are automatically deployed to staging. PRs from staging to release are automatically deployed to production. Start a deploy...
• Point People: @jpotts244 @kajatiger

Clone the project

$ git clone git@github.com:artsy/aprd.git

Setup using setup script

• Read and run setup script.

  $ cat bin/setup
  $ bin/setup
  

Setup manually (not using setup script)

• Install Elixir

  Using Homebrew

  $ brew update
  $ brew install elixir
  

  • Ensure that everything installed correctly by running mix, you should not see the following error

    $ command not found: mix
    

• Ensure you have postgres and rabbitmq installed

  • Once installed make sure both are running on your local machine (using Homebrew)

    $ brew services start postgresql
    $ brew services start rabbitmq
    

• Install dependencies with mix deps.get

• In your command line run

  brew install autoconf@2.69 && \
  brew link --overwrite autoconf@2.69 && \
  autoconf -V
  

  to fix an issue in erlang 23

• Create and migrate your database with mix ecto.setup

• Install Node.js dependencies with cd assets && npm install

• s3://artsy-citadel/aprd/.env.shared contains common configuration values for local dev. Create a .env.shared file locally and copy using this command:

aws s3 cp s3://artsy-citadel/aprd/.env.shared ./

• .env should contain configuration values specific to your local development. Create the file if it does not exist. See .env.example for suggestion on values you might want to customize.
• We use Phoenix Live View for our real-time data presentation. Make sure SECRET_SALT exists in .env.shared or .env. You can generate a secret salt with:
  • mix phx.gen.secret 32
• The app defaults to using local RabbitMQ. If you want to use the one in our Staging environment, set the appropriate values in .env
• Start Phoenix endpoint with a wrapper script: bin/start.sh

Now you can visit localhost:4000 from your browser.

Running the test suite

Run the entire test suite using the following command

$ mix test

To run a specific test file, add the path to the test file

$ mix test test/apr/views/commerce/commerce_transaction_slack_view_test.exs

Architecture

APRd listens on RabbitMQ for different topics. Once it receives a new event, it will store a copy of that event locally in it's database so we can later process the data and provide detailed and aggregated data.

Whenever we receive a new event, after storing the event locally, we use Phoenix's local PUB/SUB to broadcast we received an event. And then our websocket live views are listening on this internal PUB/SUB and they update the data on listening Webosckets reflecting the latest event updated.

Artsy Slack Setup

Setting up a new topic or channel

Before a new topic can be subscribed to from Slack, the topic must exist in APR's database. E.g.:

$ hokusai staging run --tty 'iex -S mix'
Apr.Subscriptions.create_topic(%{name: "auction_results"})

To add the APR integration to a new channel:

1. In the channel's settings, choose Integrations,
2. then Add apps, then
3. search for and select APR Announcer

In the channel, confirm the available topics and subscribe:

/apr help
/apr topics
/apr subscribe auction_results

Recovering from a Slack connection disruption

APRd is used to power critical alerting workflows in Artsy's Slack organization. After a recent incident where APRd lost its connection to Artsy's Slack, we surfaced the following steps to re-connect the digital assets needed to get it all working:

1. Re-enable the /apr slash command: https://artsy.slack.com/services/B227A48KX
2. Re-enable the @apr / APR Announcer Slack bot: https://artsy.slack.com/services/B04JQLTBUAU
3. Re-invite the Bot in (2) to the appropriate Slack channels
   • You can check your work by reading the Channels attribute on the Bot show page: https://artsy.slack.com/services/B04JQLTBUAU
4. Re-generate the bot API token (via https://artsy.slack.com/services/B04JQLTBUAU)
5. Run hokusai [staging|production] env set SLACK_API_TOKEN=token-from-step-4
6. Run hokusai [staging|production] refresh
7. If it was down for more than a few minutes, we likely need to fetch the events that were missed. See the playbook in Notion for details on how to do so.