https://github.com/alphagov/consent-api
Service for sharing user consent to cookies across multiple domains
https://github.com/alphagov/consent-api
cookie-consent data-infrastructure data-infrastructure-team data-services sde
Last synced: 8 months ago
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Service for sharing user consent to cookies across multiple domains
- Host: GitHub
- URL: https://github.com/alphagov/consent-api
- Owner: alphagov
- License: mit
- Created: 2022-06-23T08:41:09.000Z (over 3 years ago)
- Default Branch: main
- Last Pushed: 2025-03-04T17:07:55.000Z (10 months ago)
- Last Synced: 2025-05-08T22:52:04.115Z (8 months ago)
- Topics: cookie-consent, data-infrastructure, data-infrastructure-team, data-services, sde
- Language: TypeScript
- Homepage: https://consent-api-bgzqvpmbyq-nw.a.run.app
- Size: 1.78 MB
- Stars: 8
- Watchers: 7
- Forks: 0
- Open Issues: 23
-
Metadata Files:
- Readme: README.md
- License: LICENSE
Awesome Lists containing this project
README
# Single Consent
The Single Consent service enables easily sharing a user's consent or rejection
of cookies across different websites. This ensures a seamless user experience by
remembering a user's preferences without repeatedly asking for consent.
## How does it work?
1. **Cookie Consent**: When you visit a Single Consent enabled website, you may
encounter a pop-up or banner asking for your consent to use cookies.
2. **Unique ID**: If you respond, your consent to (or refusal of) cookies is
then submitted to the Single Consent service, which assigns you a randomly
generated unique ID. This ID does not contain any personal information about
you.
3. **Central Database**: Your consent data is then associated with your unique
ID and stored in the central Single Consent database.
4. **Javascript Client**: The website receives your unique ID via the Single
Consent client, a small piece of Javascript code embedded in the website.
5. **Link Decoration**: The client automatically appends your
unique ID as a parameter to the links you click on which lead to other
Single Consent enabled websites.
6. **Consent Lookup**: When a Single Consent enabled website receives a request
with a URL containing your unique ID, it uses this ID to look up your consent
data in the central database. Using this data, the website can respect your
preferences and avoid asking for consent again.
7. **Revoking Consent**: If you change your mind and refuse (or grant) consent
to use cookies, you can modify your cookie settings on the current website
and it will submit the updated data to the central database, making all other
Single Consent enabled websites aware of your changed preferences.
8. **ID Cookie**: The Single Consent client also stores your unique ID in a
cookie for the current website, so that if you return to the site without
clicking a link (eg via a bookmark, or typing in the URL to the address bar
in your browser), your consent preferences will be remembered.
9. **Audit Logging**: Following the CQRS (Command Query Responsibility Segregation) pattern,
whenever consent data is written to the PostgreSQL database, an event is also pushed
to a BigQuery dataset. This provides a complete audit trail of all consent changes,
enabling future analysis and compliance verification if needed.
## System Architecture
## Quick Start
### Prerequisites
- Docker and Docker Compose
### Running Locally
```shell
# Build and start all services
make docker-build
docker compose up
```
## Installation
You can run all the services without setup needed:
```shell
make docker-build
docker compose up
```
Each time a file is modified in the applications, the container application will restart.
## Integration Tests
```
cd apps/consent-api/tests
BASE_URL=http://localhost:8000 poetry run pytest .
```
You can also point the integration tests at the cloud instances by specifying the URL.
## Documentation
- [Architecture Documentation](docs/architecture.md)
- [Development Guide](docs/development.md)
- [Client Library Documentation](client/README.md)
## API Documentation
API documentation is available via Swagger UI when running the service locally at:
http://localhost:8000/docs
## License
Unless stated otherwise, the codebase is released under the MIT License. This covers
both the codebase and any sample code in the documentation. The documentation is ©
Crown copyright and availabe under the terms of the Open Government 3.0 licence.
## Contact the team
The Single Consent service is maintained by a team at Government Digital
Service. If you want to know more about the service, please email the Data
Infrastructure team or get in touch with them on Slack.
Team email:
`data-tools-alerts@digital.cabinet-office.gov.uk`
You can also contact the maintainers of this repository via email:
- Guilhem Forey: `guilhem.forey@digital.cabinet-office.gov.uk`