physik932/code-sample

Charter Enterprise MOTD Sample Project

A small project to help assess candidate experience with webservices and our technology stack.

Instructions

We have provided a webservice that provides a "message of the day", similar to what you might see logging into a Unix system. Unfortuantely, at Charter things don't always go as planned and we need to change the message. We need you to add the abilty to change the message. No message history or any other advanced functionality is needed, unless there is something you'd like to show off. The message can be stored in the service using any mechanism you like, but aim for simplicity. A persistent store like MySQL or Hypersonic could be overkill for this new requirement. Iterative requests for the MOTD should return the new message, if it has been changed. Be sure to edit this README.md so we understand what you've done.

Also, a rogue developer has left the code base broken. To get anything done, you're doing to have to fix the tests first! And, no, -DskipTests is not a solution!

Push your answer to this Github repo as a feature branch and create a pull request so we know you're done.

Getting Started

• To compile mvn clean package

• To run mvn spring-boot:run

• To see the message: curl localhost:8080

Prerequisites

• Java 1.8
• Maven
• cURL

Deployment

If you whiz through this sample, try adding a deployment. We are a Docker and AWS shop. Getting something into an AWS or Heroku, or whatever you're comfortable with will be an "A+"

Project hints and questions

• Stuck getting started?
  • The official Spring Boot "hello world" example is a great starting point.
• Still need help?
  • Further hints are available, Feel free to ask questions here. Edit this file in your branch by adding to the questions section, push it, and we will update the file with answers.

Rishi Sheth Development Notes

Completed Deployment

You can visit the project at here. This is the alias of my deployed docker container on Elastic Beanstalk that you can visit here.

Changing the Message of the Day

Using Postman or curl, you can PUT a raw body to the same endpoint. You should receive a "Motd updated!" message if it was successful.

Using H2 for persistence, this updates the only record in the database. You can follow up with a GET request in Postman or visit the site(s) in a browser to see the updated message.

Development Process

I started by learning about Spring Boot and how to wire up the basic REST functions to use locally. I got this set up by referencing the Spring Boot Hello World documentation. I added H2 as the in memory persistent database because I had used it in previous projects for prototyping. I used a repository class and autowired it to the MotdController class. I refactored Motd to MotdMain for the main application and used Motd as an entity class to map to our database.

I was able to fix the initial test pretty quick by adjusting the expected text. I added another test for the Put Mapping, but ran into issues where the updateMotd() test would work but the getMotd() test would fail. I found the Spring application context persists between test. I used the @DirtiesContext annotation to fix this.

The initial deployment with mvn spring-boot:run worked great, but I was able to get Docker set up locally and running easily with mvn install dockerfile:build and running with docker run -p 8080:8080 -t physik932/motd-code-sampleon my local Docker instance. The Maven Assembly plugin got the Dockerfile and jar file produced by maven into a zip file. I uploaded this to elastic beanstalk and http://motd.us-east-2.elasticbeanstalk.com set up. I used Route53 to set up a Hosted Zone and A record to motd.rishi-sheth.com.

Overall, this was a lot easier to learn thanks to a lot of great blogs and tutorials provided by Spring, Amazon and others. I have enjoyed learning more about Docker, Spring, and Amazon services for deployment.

####2018-04-01 I finally got the deployment to Amazon's Elastic Beanstalk to work with help of the Maven Assembly Plugin. The plugin picks up the Dockerfile and jar file into a zip file when I run mvn clean package. I uploaded the zip into an elastic beanstalk application configured for a single docker container and a web server. The Dockerfile was use java 8 and the jar file. Once set up, I was able to access it at http://motd.us-east-2.elasticbeanstalk.com/. I used Postman to test the PUT function with a new MOTD as the message body.

####2018-03-31 I've loved Spring so far. JpaRepository, autowiring into the controller, using an H2 database with simple props set up in the application.properties has all been really easy. Setting up mock tests and running the local server with testing help from Postman is also really easy. At this point I can updated the MOTD and iterative requests work as expected.

For clarity, I renamed Motd to MotdMain and am using Motd as an entity class tied to my h2 database. Its initially populated by a data.sql file under src/main/resources. The test was expanded to test my PUT function on the root web address (auth be damned).

If this was to be a real web app, I'd have auth set up for the update. A simple login app would be easy to use to see history of MOTDs and maybe instead of updating via PUT, you would only create with it. A POST function could be created to update which MOTD we want based on a id setup, and the GET could be expanded to output all MOTDs available.

####2018-03-29 Started with fixing the test. As I've never worked with Spring Boot, I cloned the Spring Boot Hello World as an example.

I've set up a basic H2 database using Spring. I'm really surprised how easy it was to add the dependency, a schema, and data file to prototype the H2 setup in my local web app. Most of the magic is being done by Spring and that is awesome.

The plan now is to tie CRUD operations to H2 with the REST operations in my controller.

If I have time, I'm planning to tie my domain to elastic bean stalk and route53 to set up a basic web app in AWS. If I have more time, I'll add some basic front end or error handling.

TODO

1. Set up docker plugin to automatically build the app into a docker image
2. Create a quick deployment process of the docker image to Amazon.
3. Set up my EC2 and Route 53 to play nice on motd.rishi-sheth.com