README.md

sample-app

This is one of three Git repositories, which work together to demonstrate using Consul and Vault for configuration management:

• https://github.com/steve-perkins/config-properties - Contains:
  • Properties files for every environment (e.g. "dev", "staging", "production") in a hypothetical enterprise, and every application within each environment.
  • A processor script, run by Gradle, which syncs all of the property information with Consul every time the Git repository is updated.
• https://github.com/steve-perkins/config-client-lib - A client library which loads the appropriate config properties for a given environment and application from Consul and Vault.
• https://github.com/steve-perkins/config-sample-app - A sample web application which retrieves its config properties using the client library, and displays them in the browser.

This demo shows the use case of having two types of config properties:

1. non-secret values, which can and should be maintainable by developer teams (e.g. JDBC URL's).
2. secret values, which should only be viewable or maintainable by people with specialized access (e.g. usernames and passwords)

The non-secret values are stored as-is in the config-properties repo, and loaded directly into Consul. For secret values, Git (and Consul) store a Vault path for that property. When the config-client-lib library encounters a secret, it loads the "true" value from this Vault path... and applications such as config-sample-app are none the wiser.

Setup

1. Perform all of the steps outlined in the config-properties and config-client-lib project README's.
2. This repo is a Gradle-based project, containing a Spring Boot-based web app. The Gradle script includes a bootRun task for conveniently launching the Spring Boot app. When calling this task, you'll need to pass JVM system properties needed by the client lib to reach Consul and Vault:

gradlew bootRun -DENVIRONMENT=dev -DAPPLICATION=sampleapp -DCONSUL_HOST=127.0.0.1 -DVAULT_URL=http://127.0.0.1:8200 -DVAULT_USERNAME=vault_user -DVAULT_PASSWORD=vault_pass

3. You can access the web application in your browser at: http://localhost:8080.

4. Make some changes to the properties file in your config-properties project (it's not necessary to commit the changes in Git). Re-run the processor to sync the changes into Consul.

5. Hit the sample app's "refresh" endpoint (http://localhost:8080/refresh) and confirm that the changes you made are reflected in real time without a restart.