lookback/lookback-legal

A repository for terms, consents, and various legal things we show for users. With a simple Node API.

Lookback Legal

A repository for terms, consents, and various legal things we show for users.

Consents

• We store consent texts in Markdown (.md) files inside the consents directory.
• Each directory name is treated as the name of the consent.
• Each Markdown file inside of the directories is treated as a version of the consent. The name of the Markdown text file is irrelevant.
• Each consent file must include YAML Front Matter. Front Matter is a way to embed metadata fields inside a text file. So each consent file should look like:

  ---
  date: 2018-05-08T14:06:00  # Required
  ---
  Your text here.

Adding a whole new consent

1. Branch off into a new new git branch.
2. Create a new directory in the consents directory. Give it a unique, camelCase name. This name will end up on the user object in the database, so make it easy to understand.
3. Add a .md file in the newly created directory, with a front matter and body text. You must attach today's date formatted as an ISO string:

   ---
   date: 2018-05-08T14:06:00
   ---
   Your text here.

4. Submit a PR on GitHub based on your branch. Ping relevant people for review.
5. Once merged, updated relevant services which depends on this module.

Adding a new version of a consent

See steps 1) and 3-5) above.

Changing an existing consent

⚠️ Never mutate an existing consent text! Add a new version instead.

API

Schema Definitions

interface Consent {
    version: string;
    name: string;
    createdAt: Date;
    text: string;
}

• Versioning. The version property is a SHA hash of the text property, calculated at runtime.

The module expose the following APIs:

Default export

init(consentPath?: string): object

Call this function with no arguments to make it look for consents in a default directory. Returns an object with API functions:

findConsent(consentName, version?: string): Consent;

Returns a consent object for the given consentName. If no version string is passed, the latest consent version is returned. Might return null if no consent was found for the given version.

userHasConsented(user: object, consentName: string, version?: string): boolean;

Returns true if the given user has given consent for a consentName. A specific version string can be passed, otherwise the default is to check the latest available. False is returned if no consent exists for the given name.

Example Usage

This is a sample user document in a Mongo collection:

{
    // ...
    "consents": [
        {
            "name": "someConsent",
            "version": "hash...",
            "consentedAt": new Date(),
            "where": "signupForm",
            "path": "/signup"
        }
    ]
}

const { findConsent, userHasConsented } = require('lookback-legal')();

const consent = findConsent('someConsent');

console.log(userHasConsented(user, 'someConsent'));

Tests

npm test