A software to simplify the creation and validation of digital ids for the public sector context. With Crowdspin it is possible to generate any number of digital identification records to be used to test software applications written for the public sector context.

A digital id record usually includes a base set of info:

• Gender
• Name of the person
• Last name
• Birth date
• Birth place (full details: municipality, province, region, ZIP code)
• Italian Fiscal Code

However it is possible to add more if needed.

The generation is purely random and all the created identity are fakes although there is no guarantee that the generated records could not match a real person.

The application, at this moment, provides two specific functionalities:

1. Generate a single, fake, id record at each invokation with the generate command.
2. Generate a continuous series of RESTful request, each one with a JSON body including a fake identity record

This software came out after a sort of challenge from colleagues about the most convienent way to create an record injection software for test purposes.

The current version is built manually - a new update will include the capability to generate automatically a Docker image of the software.

To build the software just ensure you have the latest version of Docker (2019) installed, clone this repo, cd into it and run this command:

docker build -t crowdspin:tag .

Where tag is any tag you would like to associate to the build.

This software can run on Linux and MacOS, altough possibly could run on Windows (never tested so far). The software is written in ES6 node using the following packages:

• autocannon, a HTTP/1.1 benchmarking tool written in node.
• yargs a tool to build interactive command line processor
• crypto-js a JavaScript library of crypto standards (hash functions used)

Mostly based on these guidelines:

• 4 spaces for indentation
• Possibly no tabs (tabs converted to space)
• Use UNIX-style newlines (\n), and a newline character as the last character of a file.
• No trailing whitespace
• Opening braces go on the same line
• Always insert curly braces in conditional also for single line statement
• Else clause on a new line just after the closed curly brace
• Use of whitespace before and after the condition statement.
• Declare one variable per var statement
• Use UPPERCASE for Constants
• In conditional test use the === operator as much as possible, to prevent stupid errors
• Method chaining: one method per line should be better to make easier to read code
• Put requires at top of the source file: to clearly illustrate a file's dependencies

Since this solution is encapsulated in a Docker container image it is very easy to run, you just need to issue one command, assuimg you have Docker installed in your system.

Automated tests not yet implemented.

Pretty simple, to generate a single fake id record run this command:

docker run --rm f2hex/crowdspin:0.5 generate

to inject a continuous stream of HTTP RESTful requests, with a JSON body containing a fake id record, run this command:

docker run --rm f2hex/crowdspin:0.5 inject http://target.endpoint.com:8080/idprocessor

you need of course to pass a valid URL. This command provides the following additional options:

crowdspin.js inject <url> [count] [duration] [connections] [pipelining]

Generates, continuously, fake valid citizen ids, complete with the Italian
Fiscal Code.
Each generate id is sent to a RESTful based service specified by a proper
endpoint URL.

Positionals:
  url   endpoint URL of the remote server to inject to       [string] [required]

Options:
  --version          Show version number                               [boolean]
  --help             Show help                                         [boolean]
  --count, -i        The number of injections to make before exiting. If set,
                     duration is ignored.                 [number] [default: -1]
  --duration, -d     The number of seconds to run the injection. Default: 10
                                                          [number] [default: 10]
  --connections, -c  The number of concurrent connections to use. Default: 10
                                                          [number] [default: 10]
  --pipelining, -p   The number of pipelined requsests to use. Default: 1
                                                           [number] [default: 1]

The inject command can generate, on a MacBook Pro i7, about 1K requests per second in a local network.

Franco Fiorese (main author). This software is built using several open source software parts/packages of the node.js community.

The code of a specific project, CodiceFiscaleJS, written by Luca Adalberto Vandro and other contributors, for creating and processing the Italian citizen's "Fiscal code".