The asynchronous worker is a separate node application which runs a set of jobs as k8s CronJobs, checking for tasks added to the database by the External and Internal node apps to process.
This allows the External/Internal web applications to offload long running or error prone operations to the worker and make it easier to re-run failed processes later.
- Node 12 (Including NPM) - If running locally
- Docker (optional)
The application does not run continuously and has several tasks which are run by different cron jobs.
As with the internal and external apps, dotenv is used to allow local running, see config.js for the list of configuration environmental variables needed.
Install dependencies and run
npm install
npm run start-worker-tasks # start worker to process regularly performed tasks
npm run start-daily-tasks # start script to run daily tasks
npm run start-payment-run # start script to run payment tasks
Currently only the unit tests are fully working. There is tech debt work to get the integration tests running again.
npm run test # checks code against standard JS and runs mocha unit tests.
The main asynchronous worker task runs on a CronJob to poll the External and Internal database †ask tables for tasks to execute in batches. Tasks which fail can be re-executed by updating their status or re-inserting with same data. It uses the value set in worker-tasks-cron.yaml to control when it is run.
The script start-daily-tasks.js is used to run tasks which need to be executed daily, using the value set in daily-tasks-cron.yaml to control when it is run.
The script start-payment-run.js is used to run payment run tasks which need to be executed on a custom schedule, using the value set in payment-run-cron.yaml to control when it is run.
The application requires a MS SQL database instance, configured with an async worker user.
The application sends email notifications using the Notify service. In order to utilize the Notify Worker you will need Notify credentials. See here for details on setting up a Notify account, and config.js for the environment variables to set.
See send-notification.js for implementation.
The DWP-CHECK task requires making a call to the DWP Benefit Checker service. This is a SOAP service to validate that given details (surname, dob, nino) a person is recorded with DWP as receiving benefits (Yes/No/Undetermined). Calling the service requires a number of environment variables set, see config.js.
See call-dwp-benefit-checker-soap-service.js for implementation, here for the SOAP service WSDL.
To calculate car expense distances the COMPLETE-CLAIM task calls the Google Distance Matrix API and attempt to retrieve the distance between the visitor address and the prison (using postcodes).
See call-distance-api-for-postcodes.js for implementation.