Compass/backend/api

Backend API

This is the code for the API running at https://api.compassmeet.com. It runs in a docker inside a Google Cloud virtual machine.

Requirements

You must have the gcloud CLI.

On macOS:

brew install --cask google-cloud-sdk

On Linux:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install google-cloud-sdk

Then:

gcloud init
gcloud auth login
gcloud config set project YOUR_PROJECT_ID

You also need opentofu and docker. Try running this (from root) on Linux or macOS for a faster install:

./script/setup.sh

If it doesn't work, you can install them manually (google how to install opentofu and docker for your OS).

Setup

This section is only for the people who are creating a server from scratch, for instance for a forked project.

One-time commands you may need to run:

gcloud artifacts repositories create builds \
  --repository-format=docker \
  --location=us-west1 \
  --description="Docker images for API"
gcloud auth configure-docker us-west1-docker.pkg.dev
gcloud config set project compass-130ba
gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding compass-130ba \
  --member="user:YOUR_EMAIL@gmail.com" \
  --role="roles/artifactregistry.writer"
gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding compass-130ba \
  --member="user:YOUR_EMAIL@gmail.com" \
  --role="roles/storage.objectAdmin"
gsutil mb -l us-west1 gs://compass-130ba-terraform-state
gsutil uniformbucketlevelaccess set on gs://compass-130ba-terraform-state
gsutil iam ch user:YOUR_EMAIL@gmail.com:roles/storage.admin gs://compass-130ba-terraform-state
tofu init
gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding compass-130ba \
    --member="serviceAccount:253367029065-compute@developer.gserviceaccount.com" \
    --role="roles/secretmanager.secretAccessor"
gcloud run services list
gcloud compute backend-services update api-backend \
  --global \
  --timeout=600s

API Deploy CD

gcloud iam service-accounts create ci-deployer \
  --display-name="CI Deployer"
gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding compass-130ba --member="serviceAccount:ci-deployer@compass-130ba.iam.gserviceaccount.com" --role="roles/artifactregistry.writer"
gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding compass-130ba --member="serviceAccount:ci-deployer@compass-130ba.iam.gserviceaccount.com" --role="roles/storage.objectAdmin"
gcloud iam service-accounts keys create keyfile.json --iam-account=ci-deployer@compass-130ba.iam.gserviceaccount.com

Set up the saved search notifications job:

gcloud scheduler jobs create http daily-saved-search-notifications \
  --schedule="0 16 * * *" \
  --uri="https://api.compassmeet.com/internal/send-search-notifications" \
  --http-method=POST \
  --headers="x-api-key=<API_KEY>" \
  --time-zone="UTC" \
  --location=us-west1

View it here.

DNS

• After deployment, Terraform assigns a static external IP to this resource.
• You can get it manually:

gcloud compute addresses describe api-lb-ip-2 --global --format="get(address)"
34.117.20.215

Since Vercel manages your domain (compassmeet.com):

1. Log in to Vercel dashboard.
2. Go to Domains → compassmeet.com → Add Record.
3. Add an A record for your API subdomain:

Type	Name	Value	TTL
A	api	34.123.45.67	600 s

• Name is just the subdomain: api → api.compassmeet.com.
• Value is the external IP of the LB from step 1.

Verify connectivity From your local machine:

nslookup api.compassmeet.com
ping -c 3 api.compassmeet.com
curl -I https://api.compassmeet.com

• nslookup should return the LB IP (34.123.45.67).
• curl -I should return 200 OK from your service.

If SSL isn’t ready (may take 15 mins), check LB logs:

gcloud compute ssl-certificates describe api-lb-cert-2

Secrets management

Secrets are strings that shouldn't be checked into Git (eg API keys, passwords).

Add the secrets for your specific project in Google Cloud Secrets manager, so that the virtual machine can access them.

For Compass, the name of the secrets are in secrets.ts.

Run Locally

In root directory, run the local api with hot reload, along with all the other backend and web code.

./run_local.sh prod

Deploy

Run in this directory to deploy your code to the server.

./deploy-api.sh prod

Connect to the server

Run in this directory to connect to the API server running as virtual machine in Google Cloud. You can access logs, files, debug, etc.

./ssh-api.sh prod

Useful commands once inside the server:

sudo journalctl -u konlet-startup --no-pager -efb
sudo docker logs -f $(sudo docker ps -alq)
docker exec -it $(sudo docker ps -alq) sh
docker run -it --rm $(docker images -q | head -n 1) sh
docker rmi -f $(docker images -aq)

Documentation

The API doc is available at https://api.compassmeet.com. It's dynamically prepared in app.ts.

Todo (Tests)

• Finish get-supabase-token unit test when endpoint is implemented