Notification Center

A Rails API service for managing in-app notifications. Users receive notifications that can be marked as read or closed. Notifications are created via RabbitMQ messages from other services.

Stack

• Ruby 3.2.3 / Rails 7.1
• MySQL
• RabbitMQ (Bunny)
• JWT authentication
• Sentry for error tracking

How It Works

Authentication

Every API request must include a Bearer token in the Authorization header:

Authorization: Bearer <token>

Tokens are decoded using AuthService with JWT_SECRET. The JWT payload must contain a user_id field that maps to a record in the users table.

# app/services/auth_service.rb
payload = JWT.decode(token, ENV.fetch('JWT_SECRET'), true, algorithm: 'HS256').first
user = User.find_by(id: payload['user_id'])

Adapt AuthService to match however your auth system issues tokens.

Notifications API

All endpoints are under /api/site/v1/ and require authentication.

Method	Path	Description
GET	/api/site/v1/notifications	List all non-closed notifications for current user
PUT	/api/site/v1/notifications/read_all	Mark all notifications as read
PUT	/api/site/v1/notifications/:uuid/read	Mark a single notification as read
PUT	/api/site/v1/notifications/:uuid/close	Close a notification

Response format:

[
  {
    "uuid": "550e8400-e29b-41d4-a716-446655440000",
    "title": "Payment successful",
    "description": "Your payment of $10.00 was processed.",
    "button_title": "View receipt",
    "button_url": "https://example.com/receipts/123",
    "status": "new",
    "style": "success",
    "is_closable": true,
    "created_at": "2024-04-11T09:02:12.000Z"
  }
]

Notification statuses: new, read, closed

Notification styles: no, success, warning, error

Creating Notifications (via RabbitMQ)

Notifications are created by publishing a message to RabbitMQ. The CreateNotificationConsumer listens on the notification_center.create_notification queue.

Message format:

{
  "title": "Payment successful",
  "description": "Your payment was processed.",
  "button_title": "View receipt",
  "button_url": "https://example.com/receipts/123",
  "style": 1,
  "is_closable": true,
  "user_ids": [1, 2, 3]
}

Field	Type	Required	Description
title	string	yes	Notification title
user_ids	array	yes	IDs of users to notify
description	string	no	Body text
button_title	string	no	CTA button label
button_url	string	no	CTA button URL
style	integer	no	0 no, 1 success, 2 warning, 3 error
is_closable	boolean	no	Whether the user can dismiss it (default: true)
uuid	string	no	Custom UUID; auto-generated if omitted

To start the consumer:

bin/create-notification-consumer

Setup

1. Clone and install dependencies:

git clone <repo>
cd notifications
bundle install

2. Configure environment:

cp .env.example .env
# edit .env with your values

3. Configure database:

cp config/database.yml.example config/database.yml
# edit config/database.yml with your credentials

4. Create and migrate the database:

bin/rails db:create db:migrate

5. Start the server:

bin/rails server

Environment Variables

Variable	Description
JWT_SECRET	Secret key used to verify JWT tokens
MYSQL_HOST	MySQL host
MYSQL_USER	MySQL user
MYSQL_PASS	MySQL password
MYSQL_DB	MySQL database name
AMQP_URL	RabbitMQ connection URL (e.g. amqp://localhost:5672)
SENTRY_DSN	Sentry DSN for error tracking (optional)

Running with Docker

docker build -t notification-center .
docker run -p 3000:3000 \
  -e JWT_SECRET=secret \
  -e MYSQL_HOST=host.docker.internal \
  -e MYSQL_USER=root \
  -e MYSQL_PASS=password \
  -e MYSQL_DB=notifications \
  -e AMQP_URL=amqp://host.docker.internal:5672 \
  notification-center

Running Tests

bundle exec rspec

Customization

• Auth: Edit app/services/auth_service.rb to match your token format or auth provider.
• User model: The User model is intentionally minimal (just email). Add whatever columns your application needs and create a migration.
• AMQP consumer: Add new consumers by subclassing BasicConsumer and overriding process.