droneengage_server_common

Shared configuration loader, helpers, and utilities used by all three DroneEngage Node.js servers — droneengage_authenticator, droneengage_server, and droneengage_storage_server. Installed via a git URL (no npm registry), pinned to a tag for reproducible builds:

"droneengage_server_common": "git+ssh://git@github.com:DroneEngage/droneengage_server_common.git#v1.0.0"

The build host needs SSH key access to the GitHub repo.

What it provides

  • Config loader factory (create(options), lib/js_serverConfig.js) — each server wraps it with its own configDir and optional enableHashHandling / envOverrides:

    const common = require('droneengage_server_common');
const path = require('path');

module.exports = common.create({
    configDir: path.join(__dirname, '..'),
    enableHashHandling: true,   // process $$HASH$$('...') directives
    envOverrides: {
        'DE_MY_ENV': 'config_key',
        'DE_MY_FLAG': (cfg, val) => { cfg.flag = (val === '1'); }
    }
});

    Handles JSON-with-comments parsing, the server.config.local override merge (below), and $$HASH$$ directives.

  • dumperror — error-printing helpers, keeping all historical API names (dumperror, fn_dumperror, dumperror2, fn_dumpdebug) so existing call sites in each server didn’t need renaming.

  • helpers.* — stripJsonComments, args, strings, validation, colors, styleHelper.

  • configHandler — the $$HASH$$('...') bcrypt directive processor.

  • password — bcrypt hash/verify with a legacy plaintext fallback.

server.config.local override pattern

Each server loads server.config, then looks for a sibling server.config.local. If present, its top-level keys are merged on top (shallow merge — the same top-level-key-only rule the C++ modules use via de_common::CConfigFile::updateJSON for their own de_<module>.local overrides). The local file is git-ignored and supports C-style comments, exactly like server.config. This mirrors the WebClient’s config.local.json pattern. $$HASH$$ directives from the local file are hashed in memory only — never persisted back to the local file.

Why a shared package

Before this package existed, the config-loading and error-printing code was duplicated across droneengage_authenticator, droneengage_server, and droneengage_storage_server independently. Centralizing it means a fix or a new envOverrides capability lands in one place and is picked up by all three servers on their next dependency bump — at the cost of needing SSH access to a private repo during npm install on build hosts.