Sample API

This sample API implements the backend section of the UQLibrary Work Test

Local Development

A local development environment has been prepared using vagrant. To run the application locally, copy the Homestead.example.yaml file to Homestead.yaml and modify it according to your needs.

Remember to set the folder path to point to where you have cloned this application.

Next, copy the .env.example to .env and modify it to suit your needs.

You will also need to add a host entry in your /etc/hosts file to point the default IP address 192.168.10.10 to homestead.app - or whatever your specified IP and/or hostname is.

To start the virtual machine, run vagrant up from the command line.

When the VM has successfully started, ssh into the box using vagrant ssh.

Run composer install to install the required Compoer dependencies.

Then enter the following commands to install the database.

$ cd sample-api
$ php artisan migrate --seed

API Services

This API implements the following endpoint services:

GET /api/library/{id}

Returns a JSON with library details for the specified id, where id is an integer value, or returns a HTTP status code of 404 if the specified id is not found.

POST /api/library

Stores a library object supplied as a JSON representation.

You must set a X-VALID-USER: ${token} request header to authenticate to the endpoint.

Example JSON body

{
  "id":   10123, 
  "code": "ARC100", 
  "name": "Architecture / Music Library", 
  "abbr": "Arch Music", 
  "url": "http://www.library.uq.edu.au/locations/architecture-music-library" 
}

Where:

id must be a positive number

code must be a 3 character, 3 number combination e.g. ARC101

name must be a string

abbr must be a string

url must be a valid URL

Possible return codes

201 Created if the resource was successfully created.

401 if an invalid X-VALID-USER token or if the header is not supplied.

422 on parameter validation failure.

Returns 500 error in all other cases.

GET /api/findSmallestLeaf

Returns the minimum value of an unsorted binary tree, given the sample JSON input described in resources/fixtures/sample-tree.json

NOTE: A sample Postman collection has been included in this repository for testing purposes.

Unit Tests

To run the unit tests, ssh into the vagrant box and enter:

$ cd sample-api
$ php vendor/bin/phpunit tests

Additional Information

Time Estimates

Estimated time required to implement: 10 hrs

Actual time: 10 hrs

Production Deployment

1. Use BambooCI or similar tool to clone and build the repository into a deployable artifact (zip).
2. Use BambooCI's built-in AWSCodeDeploy plugin to deploy the artifact, and environment configuration (i.e. .env) to configured EC2 and RDS instances.
3. For scalability, ELBs and auto-scaling groups can be configured as part of the AWS configuration scripts.
4. For optimization, the EC2 instances should be configured to run nginx and the RDS tuned for high throughput.

Issues

None