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Provides an API over the Database of Qualified Teachers (DQT). Provides the core Teaching record and will eventually replace the Database of Qualified Teachers (DQT).
TRS provides the the core teaching record data to a number of internal and external facing digital services:
It is the primary source of teaching records for DfE. It holds data to meet UK Government statutory obligations as well as allow individuals working in the UK education system (including, but not limited to) teachers in schools withing England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland to access digital services provided by the DfE.
All DfE services will adopt the standard GOV.UK One-Login service to provide standard access to citizen facing services. However, for Teacher Services digital services, it is sometime necessary to implement further authorisation to access a teaching record (e.g. for a teacher to view certificates). TRS will provide this authorisation seamlessly (from a user POV) by handling the redirection between calling service --> GOV.UK OneLogin sign in screen -->TRS (to check access) and back to the calling service.
The API is versioned and each endpoint is prefixed with the version number e.g. /v3/. V3 is further split into minor versions; a header should be added to your requests indicating which minor version you want e.g.
X-Api-Version: 20240101
Wherever possible you should call the latest version.
You can view the API specifications for each version by visiting /swagger (see Environments below for the base addresses).
An API key is required for calling the API; speak to one of the developers to get one. The key must be passed in an Authorization header e.g.
Authorization: Bearer your_api_key
See the changelog for the details of what has changed between versions.
The API is an ASP.NET Core 8 web application. To develop locally you will need the following installed:
- Visual Studio 2022 (or the .NET 8 SDK and an alternative IDE/editor);
- a local Postgres 13+ instance.
- SASS.
A justfile defines various recipes for development. Ensure just is installed and available on your $PATH as well as PowerShell.
If you're working on infrastructure you will also need:
- make;
- Terraform;
- bash.
dotnet-format is required for linting. A just recipe will install it:
just install-toolsInstall Postgres then set a connection string configuration entry in user secrets for running the apps and another for running the tests. Note you should use a different database for tests as the test database will be cleared down whenever tests are run.
e.g.
just set-secret ConnectionStrings:DefaultConnection "Host=localhost;Username=postgres;Password=your_postgres_password;Database=trs"
just set-tests-secret ConnectionStrings:DefaultConnection "Host=localhost;Username=postgres;Password=your_postgres_password;Database=trs_tests"To set up the initial database schema run:
just build
just cli migrate-dbThe databases will be created automatically when running the tests.
This solution contains a service that synchronises changes from CRM into a SQL Server database used for reporting (this replaces the now-deprecated Data Export Service). By default this is disabled for local development. For the tests to pass, you will need a test database and a connection string defined in user secrets e.g.
just set-tests-secret DqtReporting:ReportingDbConnectionString "Data Source=(local);Initial Catalog=DqtReportingTests;Integrated Security=Yes;TrustServerCertificate=True"To run the service locally, override the configuration option to run the service and ensure a connection string is provided e.g.
just set-secret DqtReporting:RunService true
just set-secret DqtReporting:ReportingDbConnectionString "Data Source=(local);Initial Catalog=DqtReporting;Integrated Security=Yes;TrustServerCertificate=True"The service will now run as a background service of the Worker project.
Add yourself to your local database as an administrator:
just create-admin "your.name@education.gov.uk" "Your Name"There are several external dependencies required for local development; these are listed below. Ask a developer on the team for the user secrets for these dependencies.
The build CRM environment is used for local development and automated tests.
The API calls the TRN Generation API to generate a TRNs.
Azure AD is used for authenticating users in the Support UI.
A tool is used to generated proxy classes for the entities defined within the DQT CRM.
The tool generates the TeachingRecordSystem.Dqt.Models.GeneratedCode.cs and TeachingRecordSystem.Dqt.Models.GeneratedOptionSets.cs files.
A configuration file at crm_attributes.json whitelists the entities and their attributes which are included on the generated types.
Run just generate-crm-models to run the code generator against the build environment using the configuration file above.
The CRM user secrets described within Developer setup must be correctly set for the tool to run successfully.
The tool is a .NET Framework application and requires .NET 4.6.
Environment-specific configuration is stored in Key Vault inside a single JSON-encoded key named 'AppConfig'. This is retrieved via Terraform at deployment time and is set as an environment variable so it can be accessed by the application.
Pull request builds will run format checks on .NET and Terraform code changes; if there are any issues the build will fail.
Before committing you can format any changed files by running:
just format-changedTo format the entire codebase run
just format