Archived

Archived this project in June 2022: we haven't touched it in years. Be warned, parts don't work, we don't remember the code, and the libraries are probably old and out of date.

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How To Build and Install

This uses AWS as the server (AppSync specifically) and stores data in Dynamo DB. This means you'll need an AWS account and have basic knowledge on how to administer cloud resources. It's a good skill to have, cloud computing is the new normal. This assumes you're familiar with Dynamo DB, AppSync, CloudFormation, CloudWatch, S3, CloudFront, and so on.

The static website is built locally, then uploaded to AWS and served via CloudFront and S3.

Install the Dynamo tables, AppSync stuff, AWS resources

Set environment variables so the cdk command below knows where to install everything. Probably best to put this in a shell startup file.

export QUIZSHOW_REGION='us-east-1'
export QUIZSHOW_ACCOUNT=123456789012

Build and install the resources (other than website files below) into the AWS account set above:

cd server
npm install
npm run build
cdk deploy

If you see Need to perform AWS calls for account 123456789012, but no credentials found. Tried: default credentials, you probably are using a plugin or other invalid setup in your ~/.aws/config file. Rename it out of the way and try again.

If you run into other issues, make sure you have followed the [CDK getting started guide][1].

You should see a CloudFormation stack named "QuizShow" in your AWS account above. You now have Dynamo tables and AppSync stuff setup, but the tables are empty and there are no website files.

Website

The cdk command above created an S3 bucket based on your shell login name to hold the website files in this step, along with a CloudFront distribution pointing to it. It's all ready, we just need to upload the actual static website files from the website/ folder.

When you git cloned the repo, file website/src/config/config.json contained default values that need editing. Edit this file and replace values with your specific things in AWS. Use the AWS console to pull them from AppSync and Cognito and paste them into this file.

Generate the website files and upload them to S3:

cd website
npm install
npm run build
cd build
aws s3 sync . s3://quizshow-$USER-cloudfront-origin

You can double-check that files are where they should be via aws s3 ls s3://quizshow-$USER-cloudfront-origin. You should see index.html and a bunch of other things.

The HTTP endpoint serving browser requests for the website are in CloudFormation. See the generated URL you should use by listing available CloudFront distributions:

aws cloudfront list-distributions

For example:

blah

QuizShow Command-line Tool

To make it simpler to manage the QuizShow app and data, there is a small command-line tool in the cmdline/ folder. It's a Node.JS app you run with arguments to do things. Build the tool so you can use it below:

cd cmdline
npm install

The cmdline is built so it'll work regardless of what you have in your Cognito User Pool, and if you have any users in the "emcee" group. It uses the API KEY method of authenticating with AppSync, which was created by the cdk command above. Login in to the AWS console, go to App Sync > Settings, and scroll down a touch. You'll find the generated api key there. It starts with "!!!-".

Like above, set environment variables, probably in your shell startup files:

export QUIZSHOW_GRAPHQL="https://blahblah.appsync-api.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/graphql"
export QUIZSHOW_REGION="us-east-1"   # just in case you forgot above :-)
export QUIZSHOW_APIKEY="da2-blahblahblah"  # api key from AWS console above

Test that it's working:

./quizshow --help

Install sample data to play with

To load the sample games into Dynamo so you have something to play with, go get (temporary) IAM user/role access/secret/session keys and set them as environment variables, then:

cd cmdline
./quizshow loadgame ../samplegames/[A-Z]*.csv

At this point, there are QuizShow games in the Dynamo tables ready to go. You can go to the website, create a Cognito account, and go nuts.

If you are interested in simulating a bunch of users so the application looks more "lived-in", use the command below to create a bunch of pretend contestants. A Contestant belongs to a specific game, so login to the AWS console, and look at the QuizGames table. Column gameId is what you're looking for. You'll use it below.

./quizshow contestants   \
    --datafile ../samplegames/contestants.csv    # has contestant raw data, like names
    --quantity 30                                # how many people to create
    --gameid 123                                 # what you found in Dynamo QuizGames above

When done, check out Dynamo table QuizContestants. They'll appear in the game as the leader board on player's screens.

Once you have contestants loaded, you'll want to see the game in action as if there were many people all playing along. Given a specific quesId from the database, run this script to have a bunch of contestants loaded above all "buzz in" in rapid succession:

./quizshow nominees --quesid 456 --quantity 10

Lastly, you can load your own users into the Cognito user pool based on an Excel spreadsheet. Since the code below includes passwords, the Excel sheet isn't included in this Git repo, but you can create one yourself easily.

Sample Excel sheet:

login	password	given_name	family_name	organization
jsmith	pumpkin	John	Smith	Acme
sjohnson	bluesky	Sue	Johnson	Federal Gov't

Call via the quizshow command, passing the Cognito User Pool to add users to, and a template email ddress. The email address field is a normal email address with "LOGIN" appearing somewhere in it, in all capital letters. The actual email address used substitutes the login column from the csv file into the "LOGIN" text.

./quizshow addusers  \
     -f ~/Documents/myusers.csv   \
     -u us-east-1_eLgTnTfAQ  \
     -e 'quizshow+LOGIN@mycompany.com'

If you see error "MissingRequiredParameter: Missing required key 'Username' in params", you probably exported your Excel sheet into a CSV file that includes a Byte Order Mark (BOM) as the first byte of the file. Remove it.

Security

Security setup is simple: all users create accounts via the QuizShow website, which are stored in a Cognito User Pool named QuizShow. Anyone can create an account with no restrictions. Any user may join any game and play along.

Only emcees may host a game (big screen showing all questions and point values) or run a game. To be an emcee:

1. Login to the AWS account and select the QuizShow Cognito User Pool
2. Under Users and Groups, select the Groups tab at top
3. Create a new Group named "emcee"
4. Add each user who should have emcee ability

For Developers

Helpful cdk commands

• npm run build compile typescript to js
• npm run watch watch for changes and compile
• cdk deploy deploy this stack to your default AWS account/region
• cdk diff compare deployed stack with current state
• cdk synth emits the synthesized CloudFormation template

How to develop

Easy: cd website && npm start. This starts up a browser window and launches the website. Edit files and save them. When files change on disk, they are automatically re-bundled and the browser refreshes the page for you.

Keep a console window open on the browser to see messages from the application.

Multiple devices with "npm start"

In case you have firewalls enabled on your developer laptop, use this neat trick to expose the local port 3000 on your LAN so phones/kindles/tablets can be used during debugging: remote port forwarding.

1. Pick a server on the LAN you can normally SSH into like 192.168.1.3
2. ssh into it and open port 3000:
   1. sudo firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-port=3000/tcp --permanent
   2. sudo firewall-cmd --reload
3. Setup remote tunnel: ssh -nNT -R 3000:localhost:3000 192.168.1.3
4. On any other device on the LAN, open browser and connect to http://192.168.1.3:3000

ssh command broken-down:

• -nNT means don't give you a terminal prompt where you can do stuff. Nice to have so you don't accidentally do work in this terminal window and close it unknowingly. With -nNT, the ssh command just sits without doing anything.
• -R 3000:localhost:3000 sets up a remote server port so remote port 3000 listens for other people to connect to it and forwards everything back to localhost's port 3000.
• 192.168.1.3 is the remote host to connect to (and the one that will listen on the port from -R above)

How to Prepare for Production

Clear out the Cognito User Pool, other than your account.

Remove everyone from Cognito group "emcee" other than yourself.

Change IOPS on the Dynamo tables to support a bunch of users at once.

Clear out the Dynamo tables:

./quizshow cleantables

Load ony the game(s) you intend to use:

./quizshow loadgame ~/mygames/fubar.csv

Cognito User Pool Structure

Data on the humans involved in the game are stored in Cognito only, as opposed to having a separate table holding users' names, logins, etc.

User Pools have Attributes that are set if the user pool ins't associated with an identity provider. If there is an IdP, the Attributes come from it.

To be as simple as possible, Cognito is setup with:

1. login name required
2. Nickname required (like a 'screen handle')
3. Organization required
4. Email required for validation
5. Phone number not required
6. Passwords are weak: nothing required, at least 6 characters
7. Anyone can sign-up for an account
8. Custom sign-up screen that skips phone number and adds nickname and organiztion fields.

Using withAuthenticator() in index.js makes sure all people have to sign-in (or sign-up and sign-in) before the app is rendered. Once signed-in, Auth.currentAuthenticatedUser() will return (via a promise) an object that looks like this:

{
    "username": "joeuser",
    "attributes": {
        "nickname": "Joe",
        "email": "joeuser@somewhere.com",
        "custom:organization": "Initech"
    },
    "signInUserSession": {
        "idToken": {
            "jwtToken": "eyJraWQiOiJXWXZvcEFFczZOVDJEb3JJa...",
            "payload": {
                "custom:organization": "Initech",
                "email": "joeuser@somewhere.com",
                "cognito:groups": [ "emcee" ]
            }
        }
    }
}

Dynamo Table Structure

An easy way to understand what's happening with the AppSync GraphQL API and how the clients work is to envision what data looks like in the Dynamo tables. Overall, the tables match the GraphQL schema directly, nearly 1:1 for convenience sake. Warning: this isn't a good model for using Dynamo DB with large data! Dynamo is a NOSQL data store, which means you don't model your data into tables like this. Dynamo DB isn't SQL and it doesn't support joins. This is a good thing. This is a tiny "play" database, so we're cheating here and mis-using Dynamo because it makes AppSync and the whole Quiz Show product simpler.

A note on AppSync structure: A better way of designing this for a production system is to have everything in a single table, or at least look for places to combine things, such as including all categories in the QuizGames table, instead of breaking them out separately. The purpose of this demo program is to show how a bunch of Resolvers for different tables work together to assemble return structures for clients, and not necessarily how to design efficient data storage.

QuizGames

Holds one Item for each game. A Game has an owner, tied to the ID from Cognito. Items contain all the meta-data about a game and the key in QuizGame is used as a "foreign key" in the other tables where needed.

gameId	emcee	title
56	joeuser	Spelling Bee
109	hchen	Networking
7006	asultan	Driver's Test Prep

Indexes:

• Primary: gameId (HASH), used as typical, artificial key for assembling URLs, and for others to reach a QuizGame from another device
• GSI OwnerByGameId: emcee (HASH) + gameId (RANGE), search by owner and get a list of IDs

QuizCategories

Separate table with just Category names. This also has a separate, unique ID for every Category, which you'll need to match-up questions from QuizQuestions below.

gameId	catgId	categoryName
109	10	OSI Stack
109	11	"Be The Packet"
109	12	Unix Commands
7006	77	Street Signs
7006	78	Road Safety

Indexes:

• Primary: gameId (HASH) + catgId (RANGE), usual way in is to start from a QuizGames Item and use it's ID to find all categories here

QuizQuestions

Each Item is a single question for a QuizGame. Foreign Key to QuizCategories for the category name.

catgId	quesId	points	question	answer	state
12	1	50	Show net interfaces?	ifconfig	closed
10	2	100	Layer 4 protocols?	TCP, UDP	closed
12	3	325	Open sockets?	netstat
77	4	200	Red octagon?	Stop sign
78	5	300	Safe distance?	2 seconds

Indexes:

• Primary: catgId (HASH) + quesId (RANGE), to get all question Items for a gameId
• GSI QuesId: quesId (HASH), during game play for people to retrieve individual questions

QuizContestants

Each Item is a person who is playing a particular Game. There is no Dynamo representation of just a person. We're using Cognito User Pools which carry their own Attributes like name and login. This is sufficient as the database of record for human name info. Contestants are logged-in Users from a Cognito User Pool that are playing a game. Because of this, each Item in QuizContestants carries their current score.

gameId	login	name	score
12	asmith	Agnet Smith	500
12	jbond	James Bond	12900
12	msmart	Max Smart	0
53	deter	Deter M.	1400
53	harold	Harold	100

Indexes:

• Primary: gameId (HASH) + login (RANGE), to get all people playing a game, or to get/update the current score for a player