jlane9/bulletin

Bulletin Example App

Example chat room API

Instructions

Manual

1. Install dependencies pip3 install -r requirements.txt
2. Initialize database python3 manage.py migrate
3. Generate static files python3 manage.py collectstatic --no-input
4. Create your user python3 manage.py createsuperuser
5. Run server python3 manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:8080
6. Navigate to http://localhost:8080/admin

Scripts

1. Install project script/setup
2. Create your user python3 manage.py createsuperuser
3. Run project script/server
4. Navigate to http://localhost:8080/admin

Docker

1. Run docker compose docker-compose up
2. In a separate console,
   • Run database migrations docker-compose exec app python3 /deploy/app/manage.py migrate
   • Create user docker-compose exec app python3 /deploy/app/manage.py createsuperuser
3. Navigate to http://localhost:8080/admin

Known Installation Issues

If you experience an issue while installing on a Mac and the error message contains the following, pg_config is required to build psycopg2 from source, try installing postgres

# Install Brew
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install.sh)"

# Install PostgreSQL
brew install postgresql

For Ubuntu or similar run, apt-get install python3-psycopg2

Acceptance Criteria

1. Users
   • Users must have a unique username ✓
   • Users can sign up with username & password ✓
   • Users can login with username & password ✓
2. Topic
   • Any authenticated user can create a new topic ✓
   • Authenticated users can list topics by most recently active ✓
3. Messages
   • Authenticated users can post messages in topics ✓
   • Authenticated users can list the last 50 messages for a room topic ✓
4. Authentication
   • Should be Bearer Auth ✓
5. Deployment
   • The app does not have to be deployed however there should be instructions on how to run it locally ✓
   • While the app doesn't need to be deployed please design it as if you were going to deploy it and be prepared to describe how you would deploy it to production including CI/CD, Cloud Provider and services and why you would choose those. ✓
6. UI
   • Please create a basic UI with the following
     • Users can login & logout
     • Authenticated users can create topics & see list of topics
     • Authenticated users can view recent messages in topic & post message to topic
     • The UI doesn't have to be real time but be prepared to talk about how you might make it real time & the implications of your choices for deployment & scaling
     • Using a SPA framework is encouraged but not strictly required. Be prepared to talk about why you chose the UI framework you used

Technologies

• Language: Python
• Framework: Django
• Database: Postgres
• UI: React (Ionic)
• Local Deployment: Docker
• Cloud Service: AWS Lambda (with serverless)
• Testing: Pytest

Explanation

I chose Python and the framework Django to demonstrate how easy, readable and production-ready Django can be. Although, Flask would generally work well with an example such as this, the sheer amount of "best practices" that Django can provide with little effort made it the clear winner. And once the system is setup, modifying or extending capabilities can be achieved in significantly less time than a Flask-style project would take to produce while continuing to adhere to those "best practices". The database I chose was Postgres because it had the best support for Django.

For deployments, I chose to go with AWS Lambda because it is cheap (free 1 million requests per month) and it supports auto-scaling automatically. Lambda can be cost-ineffective for resource intensive services vs. ECS/EC2 but is great for testing and the service can easily move over to ECS/EC2 once there is a need because we've already built the Docker file.

Future Enhancements

• Private rooms with invite-only