docs/content/services/interface.md

+++ title = "Interface" weight = 40 +++

Interface

Interface is a service that acts as a connecting end of the bridge, listening in for Notifications from a particular forge repository.

These notifications, which may be in the form of a Comment, Issue, or Pull Request, are then further defined into Events to create a workable unit set, that the interface can use to translate operations from one forge to another forge.

The procedure of the Notification-Event Translation System, works as follows,

1. Upon creation of the Interface, and set up of a forge repository to look for, the interface subscribes to the forge's notifications.
2. Every notification received by the interface from the forges, is then identified and translated into it's respective Event model, be it an Issue or PR.
3. Upon conversion into the respective model, Interface processes these Events, and converts them into the model required for the destination forge.

Setting up the Development Environment

In order to test out and utilise the Northstar lookup service, we will need to set up an interface to be run on the local machine. There are a few configuration changes that must be made for the interface to be recognized by the lookup service.

Changes to the config/settings.toml,

[default.system]
northstar = "http://computer.domain.com:port"

[default.server]
url = "http://computer.domain.com:port"

Note that the port assigned to the interface and northstar must not already be in use by another application/service, and that you can find out the hostname for your system through the following command,

hostname --fqdn

There are a few more settings to add in, as a means to validate the user who hosts the interface, this also depends on the forge of your choosing. As of right now, interface supports only gitea, and we can fill up the config/settings.toml, with the same.

[default]
forge = "gitea"

[default.gitea]
host = "https://gitea.com"
api_key = "generate-the-api-key-from-gitea-and-paste-here"
username = "fluxer101"
password = "flux101"

Note that the API key in Gitea is known as an access token, one which can be generated here.

FAQ

Why does an integrity error show up?

As ForgeFlux's Interface is an actively developing project, there are a few errors that are caused by an upgrade to the database, in which case integrity errors are bound to pop up. In this case, remove the instance/ directory where the database for the service would be stored, to rebuild it the next time the application is run.