language exploration

Cause the world needs more usless microservices

I wanted to try out Rust a bit. I wanted to see how mature it was, how easy it was to get started and how the tooling worked. I decided to implement a useless microservice in Ruby, Go and Rust so I can compare them and get some insights.

I'm a total n00b in both Go and Rust, so don't expect any magic in here.

Using

Run rake to install everything and rake test to verify that the different implementations work correctly.

You will need to install rust, ruby, go, node.js and crystal.

rust

As of this writing, you may need to latest Rust master. This is due to a bug in cargo 0.4.0, which is included in the latest 1.2.0 release. If this is no longer the most recent stable, go with stable instead of master.

Go

Install Go and set up your $GOPATH according to the instructions.

tl;dr:

mkdir -p ~/gopath
echo "export GOPATH=\"$HOME/gopath\"" >> ~/.bashrc
export GOPATH="$HOME/gopath"

Ruby

Make sure you are on a recent Ruby and that you have bundler installed. The rake tasks take care of the rest.

node

Make sure you have node and npm installed.

Crystal

Install crystal. Can use brew install crystal if on osx

Service definition

Create a service with the following API:

GET /api/current-time(.ext)?

Content type

1. When extension is .json, force JSON response.
2. When extension is .txt, force plaintext response.
3. When extension is missing, look at the Accept header to determine response.
4. On no Accept header, a */* MIME type, no supported MIME type, or invalid MIME type, force plaintext response.

Plaintext format

Respond with 14 O'clock if local time is between (14:00-14:30]. Respond with half past 14 if local time is between (14:30-15:00].

JSON format

Respond with the following document:

{
  "stamp": 1441402488,                 // UNIX time
  "fullstamp":1441402488.379437,       // UNIX time, with decimals for precision
  "string":"2015-09-04T23:34:48+02:00" // RFC3339 formatted string
}