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(https://search.usa.gov) and API settings file.

Production Site details

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
CODE

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
CODE

The API Access Key is available via the admin site.

Troubleshooting

Status Page

Search.gov offers a system status page.

Source code implementation

Service Implementation

lib/search

Scheduled Downtime

01-01-2019:

Due to a temporary government shutdown, we are not in the office and not able to respond to emails. Both the Search Admin Center and your search results pages will remain up and running.

Escalation Procedure

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

  2. Reach out to Search.gov contacts

Search.gov Contacts

Contacts

Role

Name

E-mail

Main contact

Dawn McCleskey

Dawn.mccleskey@gsa.gov

Operations contact

Luke Samuels

Luke.samuels@gsa.gov

General Support

Support

search@support.digitalgov.gov