PostApp API

A simple Ruby on Rails application implementing some basic blogging functionality as a JSON API.

Built using Ruby 2.2.2 and Rails 4.2.1

##Installing## First things first: make sure you are running the same (or fully compatible) versions of Ruby and Rails mentioned above, then install the bundler gem (gem install bundler), and finally run bundle install from within the project directory. Once all the required gems are installed, simply start the server by running rails s, and start hitting the api endpoints described below with your favorite http request tool!

Example: hitting the following url from your browser should do the trick (although you should probably add some data to the database, or else the response won't be very interesting).

http://localhost:3000/api/posts/

##Seeding the database## You can seed the database with a small amount of basic data by running the following from within the project directory: rake db:setup (or alternatively rake db:reset if you've already created it once), followed by rake db:migrate. If successful, hitting the url mentioned above should now display some nice JSON data in your browser!

##Running tests## To run the full suite of rspec unit tests, simply run rspec from within the project directory.

To run only the tests for a specific resource/endpoint, use rspec spec/controllers/api/<name_of_spec_file>.rb. For example, rspec spec/controllers/api/posts_controller_spec.rb

Finally, to run a specific test within a specific spec file, use rspec spec/controllers/api/<name_of_spec_file>.rb:<line # of spcific test or test group>. For example, rspec spec/controllers/api/posts_controller_spec.rb:104

##API Endpoints## The following resources/endpoints are implemented as part of the API:

###Posts###

1. List all posts that are no more than one month old

   `GET '/api/posts'`
   
   Example response: 
   ```
   

{ "posts": [{ "id": 2, "title": "Will's First Post", "author_name": "Will", "author_city": "San Francisco", "images": [{ "url": "http://i.imgur.com/zV4Gfr3.jpg" }], "updated_at": "2015-04-06T02:58:04.772Z" }, { "id": 1, "title": "First Post", "author_name": "Craig", "author_city": "Oakland", "images": [{ "url": "http://i.imgur.com/fSgnUKW.jpg" }], "updated_at": "2015-04-06T02:58:04.768Z" }] }

2. Create a new post

       `POST '/api/posts'`

       Example `POST` params/data:
       ```
{
    "post" => {
        "title" => "Really Cool Post", "content" => "This is my first post, I hope you all like it!", "user" => {"id" => 1}
}

3. View an individual post

   `GET '/api/posts/:id'`
   
   Example response:
   ```
   

{ "post": { "id": 1, "title": "First Post", "author_name": "Craig", "author_city": "Oakland", "images": [{ "url": "http://i.imgur.com/fSgnUKW.jpg" }], "updated_at": "2015-04-06T02:58:04.768Z" } }

4. Update a post

       `PUT '/api/posts/:id'`

       Example `PUT` params/data: 
       ```
{
    "post" => {
        "title" => "foo"
    }, 
    "id" => "1"
}

5. Delete a post

   `DELETE '/api/posts/:id'`
   

###Images###

1. Add an image to a post

   `POST '/api/images'`
   
   Example `POST` params/data:
   ```
   

{ "image" => { "url" => "http://i.imgur.com/nruy8eg.jpg", "post" => {"id" => 1} } }

2. Delete an image from a post

       `DELETE '/api/images/:id'`

###Comments###
**Note:** Comments may be nested in a hierarchical tree structure within a post

1. List all the comments for a post

       `GET '/api/comments?post_id=:id'`

       Example response: 
       ```
{
    "comments": [{
        "id": 4,
        "content": "This is such a great post! Very clever and insightful - keep up the good work!",
        "updated_at": "2015-04-06T02:58:04.840Z",
        "user": {
            "id": 2
        },
        "comments": [{
            "id": 2,
            "content": "I totally agree!",
            "updated_at": "2015-04-06T02:58:04.843Z",
            "user": {
                "id": 3
            },
            "comments": [{
                "id": 1,
                "content": "Me too!",
                "updated_at": "2015-04-06T02:58:04.824Z",
                "user": {
                    "id": 1
                },
                "comments": []
            }]
        }]
    }]
}

2. Create a new comment for a post (either a "root" comment or nested within an existing comment thread)

   `POST '/api/comments'`
   
   Example `POST` params/data: 
   ```
   

{ "comment" => { "content" => "Nulla tempor est ex, vitae tempus justo facilisis tincidunt. Mauris.", "post" => { "id" => 1 }, "user" => { "id" => 1 } } }

3. Delete an existing comment (and any/all comments nested beneath it)

       `DELETE '/api/comments/:id'`

##Next steps##
The following is a list of "next steps" that I would work on, given the time (prioritized with highest at the top):
 1. Implement some reporting functionality that could aggregate data across dimensions such as: individual user activity (i.e. show me all the posts and comments for a given user) or regional activity (i.e. show me all the posts and/or comments made by any user in a given city).
 2. Implement a UI to make use of the functionality provided by the API, so that normal users can actually use the thing :)
 3. Add some user-friendly widgets for text editing/image uploading (e.g. currently an "image" in the system is nothing more than a url to an image elsewhere on the web, which is obviously not very robust). Instead, I'd be interested in trying something like the *ckeditor* library, as I've heard good things (https://github.com/galetahub/ckeditor)
 4. Write more tests! The current test suite was intended as a light covering of the basic functionality, but by no means offers full or complete test coverage. You can **always** write more tests!
 5. If this were to become a scalable, production-quality application, I'd of course have to address issues of concurrency, load balancing, redundancy, etc.