TEKsystems DevOps Project

Requirements

• Built on Go 1.12.4
• Utilizes Protocol Buffer compiler https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf
• Utilizes Protocol Buffers for gRPC/HTTP endpoints https://github.com/golang/protobuf
• Utilized extended gRPC ecosystem https://github.com/grpc-ecosystem/grpc-gateway
• Utilized BoltDB for in-memory object storage https://github.com/boltdb/bolt

User Story

As an avid video game reviewer I want a way to create blog posts for my video game reviews So that I can share my reviews in a way that my readers can respond to.

Breakdown

• Single user (video game reviewer)
• Way to create blog posts for video game reviews
  • What is a blog post?
  • What makes up a 'video game review?'
    • Title, text discussion and author
• So that I can share my reviews in a way that my readers can respond to
  • Share my reviews
    • Sharing is inherent with post creation
  • "In a way my readers can respond to"
    • Implies a comment section

Acceptance Criteria

• A blog post will show a title, article text (plain text) and an author name
• Comments are made on blog posts and show comment text (plain text) and an author name

Development

The project's structure was designed such that the API routs are easily extensible.

• Make sure to run make deps to get all of the required dependencies

To develop on the project:

1. Update the *.proto file in the api/proto/v1 folder to add new messages and endpoints
2. At the root of the project run make pb to generate the protobuf files and the associated application gateway
3. Update pkg/service/blog-service.go to utilize the new endpoints and message types
4. Update pkg/service/blog-service_test.go to test the new endpoints.

Usage

1. Build the service found under pkg/cmd/server
2. Run the service ./server -grpc-port=8000 -http-port=8080
3. You can now make requests via localhost over port 8080 using the routes found under the swagger documentation
4. A semi-functioning example of the application exists at cmd/client-http

Testing

• The test of the service can be run by running go test inside of pkg/api/v1/service
  • Note: this method of testing only utilizes gRPC application endpoints.
  • The client at cmd/client-http could be used to facilitate E2E testing of the REST endpoints.

API Routes

API Route documentation in the form of a swagger can be found here

Discussion

• We assume that the API can only be accessed by authenticated users. At the moment there is no authentication on any API routes.
• By default, the maximum message size to send/receive over gRPC is 4MB.
  • We assume that at the moment with the current storage that posts and their comments will be less than 4MB.
    • This can be alleviated in the future by increasing the gRPC message size
    • This can also be fixed by decoupling comments and posts, such that fetching a post is a particular call/response, and fetching a posts' comments is a separate call/response
• Note - there was not enough time to get the application functioning in a container. However, due to the simplicity of the application (single generated binary with a small amount of flags). I believe it is trivial to package the application, build and expose it's ports.

Future Goals

• Decouple comments from the posts themselves, and have each comment link to a postID
• Comments can also store timestamps.
• Comments could also have replies.
• Posts can have timestamps and we can retrieve posts in order using range queries: https://github.com/boltdb/bolt#range-scans
• Posts could have a score field. Either a rating system (stars) or a score out of 100.
• Extended feature set
  • DELETE post
  • DELETE comments
  • UPDATE post
  • UPDATE comment

TODOS:

• Make example client application functioning
• Make Docker build function