CARDZ

Preface

This repo is a lightweight version of the "Bonus Cards API" app. Please refer to the Cardz documentation to get acquainted with the domain.

Oftentimes, the value of the new project is not yet apparent, and the management wishes to test some working prototype without fully committing to the project, thus creating the need for some kind of quick pilot project, MVP or the likes of it. In this instance, the idea is to create a simple MVP app with an extensive use of native Laravel features. We'll keep the same API routes and responses as in the main app to make them compatible and interchangeable from the frontend perspective.

In some aspects it diverges from the simplification concept, but only inasmuch as native Laravel features allow us to go. For example, we use docker with Laravel Sail and a RabbitMQ container instead of using a fake provider. Given the availability of containers, queues, RabbitMQ and such, we use queued jobs to handle asynchronous data transfer when applicable.

We were going to use Laravel Sanctum authorization capabilities instead of something more involved but settled on foregoing it altogether, at least for now, as they do not add a lot of visible value for the MVP. However, Sanctum is still used as an authentication module.

This version casts aside a lot of design patterns used in the main one. This, of course, does not mean that it's unstructured or not scalable. It's quite possible to develop this MVP into a fully functional production application. The main difference between the two approaches (this and the main app) is the starting point of development and presumed managerial requirements.

Installation instructions

• clone the repo with git clone;
• run composer install;
• copy .env.example to .env;
• provide your app key with php artisan key:generate;
• optionally run alias sail='[ -f sail ] && bash sail || bash vendor/bin/sail' to use the sail script without the path.
• run sail up -d or ./vendor/bin/sail up -d;
• run migrations for your DB with sail artisan migrate;
• the demo application is now running on the http://localhost/.

Optionally, you can run sail artisan test to take a look at the small assortment of included tests. For this to work you will need to either add queues_testing database in the postgres container or to modify .env.testing to work with other database.

Code structure

Most of the app code lies within the src directory. Parts of the infrastructure unrelated to the domain are in the codderz directory. Consider it a kind of external lib.
Some app code is in the app directory (mostly due to the Laravel structure), specifically in Models and Jobs.

Considering that the amount of code in this app is tiny compared to the main app, it's almost wholly contained in the controllers and models.