Getting 'bad gateway' error on the congressforms URL

[koryp123]

The URL in question is:
https://congressforms.eff.org/fill-out-form

We send our POST data like we always have but we continue to get the 502 Bad Gateway error from your servers.

Is this URL still active? Thanks for any help!

[wioux]

Hi Kory. We disabled that API last year and are no longer supporting the associated project (phanton-of-the-capitol). We've created a new congress forms library in two parts:

• This repository, which provides the messaging logic in the form of a ruby gem.
• EFForg/congress_forms_api, which is an open source web app replicating the old congressforms.eff.org API.

We no longer host the API publicly -- when we took it down we attempted to send notice but we were unable to get in touch. However if you'd like to self-host the API or use the ruby gem I'd be happy to answer questions or accept PRs as you get it set up.

[sirchuck]

Hi wioux, I'm working on adding the repository to our app. When you offered the two options above, they are independant options of each other right? Or is it actually one library in two parts?

Also, do both repositorys require Chrome? Thanks!

[wioux]

The web app includes this gem as a dependency. Chrome is required to message the Senate, but not the House (those messages are sent through their CWC API).

You can also run congress_forms_api as a docker container, in which case it'll build itself with all the necessary dependencies. This is what I'd recommend if you do chose to run the API, since it'll also bring up the service dependencies (postgres and the daemonized worker process).

[sirchuck]

Ok sounds good, I'll give that a try now.

On chrome headless, are you saying to set an environment variable? Ex: (ubuntu)
export HEADLESS=0

Thanks for the assist.