Notifications

A notifications component that parts of CF can use to send email to end users. There is a walkthrough of using the Notifications Service which will show how to set it up and use it.

UAA Client

Notifications itself needs the following UAA client in order to retrieve arbitrary users' email addresses and check the members of arbitrary spaces:

properties:
  uaa:
    clients:
      notifications:
        secret: my-secret
        authorities: cloud_controller.admin,scim.read
        authorized-grant-types: client_credentials

Client Configurations

Send Notifications

The following client configurations are needed for sending messages to individual users, users in a specific space and arbitrary email addresses.

To send non-critical notifications, notifications.write scope is required. Sending critical notifications requires critical_notifications.write scope. To send notifications to an arbitrary email address requires emails.write scope.

notifications-client-name:
  scope: uaa.none
  resource_ids: none
  authorized_grant_types: client_credentials
  authorities: notifications.write,critical_notifications.write,emails.write
  autoapprove:

View and Edit User Preferences

To view and edit a user's preferences for receiving non-critical notifications, a client will need to be configured with notification_preferences.read scope and notification_preferences.write scope.

A client with notification_preferences.admin scope has the ability to retrieve an arbitrary user's preferences.

notifications-client-name:
  scope: notification_preferences.read,notification_preferences.write,openid
  resource_ids: none
  authorized_grant_types: authorization_code,client_credentials,refresh_token
  redirect_uri: http://example.com/sessions/create
  authorities: notification_preferences.admin
  autoapprove:

If you are unfamiliar with UAA consult the UAA token overview.

##Configuring Environment Variables

Variable	Description	Default
CC_HOST*	Cloud Controller Host	<none>
CORS_ORIGIN	Value to use for CORS Origin Header	*
DB_LOGGING_ENABLED	Logs DB interactions when set to true	false
DB_MAX_OPEN_CONNS	Maximum number of open DB connections	0 (unlimited)
DATABASE_URL*	URL to your Database	<none>
DEFAULT_UAA_SCOPES*	Comma separated list of scopes	<none>
ENCRYPTION_KEY*	Key used to encrypt the unsubscribe ID	<none>
GOBBLE_MIGRATIONS_DIR*	Location of the gobble migrations directory	<none>
PORT	Port that application will bind to	3000
ROOT_PATH*	Root path of your application	<none>
SMTP_AUTH_MECHANISM*	SMTP Authentication (none, plain, cram-md5). Most users will want to use plain.	<none>
SMTP_CRAMMD5_SECRET	Secret value used for CRAMMD5 SMTP auth	<none>
SMTP_LOGGING_ENABLED	Logs SMTP interactions when set to true	<none>
SMTP_HOST*	SMTP Host	<none>
SMTP_PASS	SMTP Password	<none>
SMTP_PORT*	SMTP Port	<none>
SMTP_TLS	Use TLS when talking to SMTP server	true
SMTP_USER	SMTP Username	<none>
SENDER*	Emails are sent from this address	<none>
TEST_MODE	Run in test mode	false
UAA_CLIENT_ID*	The UAA client ID	<none>
UAA_CLIENT_SECRET*	The UAA client secret	<none>
UAA_HOST*	The UAA Host	<none>
VERIFY_SSL	Verifies SSL	true

* required

Posting to a notifications endpoint

Notifications currently supports several different types of messages. Messages can be sent to:

• Users via the /users/:id endpoint
• Spaces via the /spaces/:id endpoint
• Organizations via the /organizations/:id endpoint
• All users in the system via the /everyone endpoint
• UAA Scopes via the /uaa_scopes/:scope endpoint
• Emails via the /emails endpoint

The Users, Spaces, Organizations, Everyone, and UAA Scopes endpoints expect a json body to be posted with following keys:

Key	Description
kind_id*	a key to identify the type of email to be sent
text**	the text version of the email
html**	the html version of the email
subject*	the text of the subject
reply_to	the Reply-To address for the email

* required

** either text or html have to be set, not both

The Emails endpoint expects a json body to be posted with the following keys:

Key	Description
to*	the recipient of the email
subject*	the text of the subject
reply_to	the Reply-To address for the email
text**	the text version of the email
html**	the html version of the email

* required

** either text or html have to be set, not both

API Documentation

• Version 1 Documentation
• Version 2 Documentation

Configuring Email Templates

You can do a whole lot to configure templates for your notifications, see API Docs for specific endpoints available!

UnsubscribeID

AES Encryption is used to encrypt a token value for unsubscribing a user from a notification. The format of the token is the user_guid|client_id|kind_id. The key used to instantiate a cipher is a 16 byte MD5 sum of the text given to the ENCRYPTION_KEY environment variable.

Encrypting:

1. Concatenate user GUID, client ID, and kind ID into a single string, delimited by a | character.
2. Base64 encode the concatenated string.
3. Encrypt the encoded text using AES cipher in CFB mode.
4. Base64 encode the cipher text.

Decrypting:

1. Base64 decode the unsubscribe token.
2. Decrypt the decoded text using AES cipher in CFB mode.
3. Base64 decode the decrypted text.
4. Split the text at the | characters.

Development

Running locally

The application can be run locally by executing the ./bin/run script. This script will look for a file called ./bin/env/development to load environment variables. Setting the TEST_MODE env var to true will disable the requirement for a running SMTP server.