Search.gov

Last Updated: December 19, 2024

Introduction

This document outlines key contacts, an overview of the integration, and configuration details for Search.gov as implemented within VA.gov integration through Vets API.

Overview and Terminology

The Search.gov integration is owned by the platform team on VA.gov.

Search.gov provides indexed search results via a web results API. The VA.gov API consumes responses from this endpoint and communicates results to the FE.

Integration Endpoints

The VA.gov API Search.gov integration utilizes a single JSON web results endpoint at https://search.usa.gov/search/i14y.

Search.gov provides a general service healthcheck in the form of a GET request to https://search.usa.gov/healthcheck

Required Configuration

Configuration for this partner service is maintained within both the Search.gov admin site(search.gov) and API settings file.

Production Site details

• Affiliate = va

• Site code = 7378

• Admin link: https://search.usa.gov/sites/7378 (sign-in required)

These are the minimal settings required for the Search service.

In config/settings.yml:

# Settings for search
search:
  access_key: SEARCH_GOV_ACCESS_KEY
  affiliate: va
  mock_search: true
  url: https://search.usa.gov/api/v2

In prod-settings.local.yml

search:
  access_key: "{{ lookup('aws_ssm_custom', 'plat.{{ deployment_env }}./dsva-vagov/vets-api/<env>/search_gov_access_key', version='desired_version_number') }}"
  mock_search: false

The API Access Key is available via the admin site (sign-in required).

Troubleshooting

Status Page

Search.gov offers a system status page.

Source code implementation

Service Implementation

lib/search

Scheduled Downtime

Consider scheduling a maintenance window in PagerDuty if planned downtime is expected. This will activate the appropriate banners and notifications. Additionally, manually tripping the breaker in the Breakers gem can help ensure that request success and failure data is accurately recorded in Redis. The gem uses this data to detect outages and manage request flow. While a service is marked as down, occasional requests will still be sent to check if the service has become available again.

Escalation Procedure

1. Ensure the Search.gov service is up. curl -v https://search.vets.gov/healthcheck

2. Reach out to Search.gov contacts

Contacts

Help and feedback

• Suggest content changes to this page.

• Submit new Platform Website content.

• Get help from the Platform Support Team in Slack.

• Submit a feature idea to the Platform.