Backend Engineering Assessment – Submission

✔ What I Did

• Connected to the provided MySQL emails database on the server
• Built a Laravel app with:
  • Artisan command to parse email → raw_text (plain text only)
  • RESTful API (Store, Get, Update, Delete, List)
  • Token-based auth middleware
• Parsing uses php-mime-mail-parser/php-mime-mail-parser (no external services)
• Skips already processed rows
• API and parsing logic tested and working

📂 Server Info

• Project path: /var/www/html/email-parser
• DB used: emails (loaded via successful_emails.sql)

How to install locally

• I've prepared a Docker setup for local development. You can run the following command to start the containers:

  docker-compose up -d

• Run the following command to install the dependencies:

  docker-compose exec app composer install

• Copy the .env.example file to .env and set your database credentials:

    cp .env.example .env

• Generate the application key:

  docker-compose exec app php artisan key:generate

• Run the migrations:

    docker-compose exec app php artisan migrate

  • Create a user using php artisan tinker for API authentication:

    docker-compose exec app php artisan tinker

  $user = \App\Models\User::create([
  'name' => 'Your Name',
  'email' => 'your_email@example.com',
  'password' => bcrypt('your_password'),
  ]);
  echo $user->createToken('API Token')->plainTextToken;

🧪 How to Test

• Run parser manually: php artisan emails:parse
• API: use Authorization: Bearer {TOKEN} header
• Create token by running php artisan tinker and executing the following:

  $user = \App\Models\User::find(1); // Replace 1 with the user ID
  echo $user->createToken('API Token')->plainTextToken;    

• Use the token in your API requests. Select Bearer Token in Postman and paste the token in the field.

✅ To-Do List for Backend Engineering Assessment

Setup

• Log into the server and verify database access
• Clone project to /var/www/email-parser
• Set up .env with correct DB credentials
• Run composer install and php artisan key:generate

Email Parsing

• Create emails:parse Artisan command
• Use php-mime-mail-parser/php-mime-mail-parser to extract plain text
• Strip HTML and headers
• Keep only printable characters and \n
• Skip already processed records
• Limit batch size for safety
• Test parsing on real data

Scheduler

• Register the command
• Run Laravel scheduler via schedule:work or cron

RESTful API

• Create POST /api/emails to store and auto-parse
• Create GET /api/emails/{id} to fetch by ID
• Create PUT /api/emails/{id} to update
• Create GET /api/emails to list
• Create DELETE /api/emails/{id}
• Add token-based authentication middleware

Finalization

• Parse all existing unprocessed records
• Write README with setup and API instructions
• [ x Email submission with:
  • GitHub repo link
  • Server path: /var/www/html/email-parser
  • Confirmation that everything is working

✅ My Deployment Tasks

• Import existing email data into the newly migrated Laravel database on the server
• Ensure the imported data matches the structure expected by Laravel
• Create a user using php artisan tinker for API authentication
• Generate and assign an API token or notification key for the user
• Set up and confirm that cron is running the parsing job on the server
• Test the entire setup directly on the server to make sure everything works as expected