Overview

The web service allows questions to be added, updated and removed. Comments can be added to questions for remarks on the content of the question. Answers can be added to questions in response to a question posed. Comments can also be added to answers for remarks on the content of the answer.

Cache validation is supported through the use of ETags on the server-side and the HTTP header "If-None-Match" in client requests to the Web Service.

Installation

The following steps aim to provide a brief guide on how to set up the web service on Ubuntu Server LTS 12.04.

1. Install Node.js

    sudo apt-get update
    sudo apt-get install build-essential
    sudo apt-get install curl
    echo 'export PATH=$HOME/local/bin:$PATH' >> ~/.bashrc
    . ~/.bashrc
    mkdir ~/local
    mkdir ~/node-latest-install
    cd ~/node-latest-install
    curl http://nodejs.org/dist/node-latest.tar.gz | tar xz --strip-components=1
    ./configure --prefix=~/local
    make install
    curl https://npmjs.org/install.sh | sh
   

2. Install and updated required packages with npm update

Usage

Run

To run the server with the existing database use:

node index

When the server has started, in a new shell you can issue HTTP requests, via cURL for example.

On the first run, there will be no existing database, so this is equivalent to running from a clean start.

Run from clean start

To run the server with an empty database use:

node index -r

For the first run, the -r option is not necessary.

API

For documentation of the API with endpoints and examples, see doc/api.html or doc/api.md.

Test

To run the system testing script, ensure the web service server is not running, then execute:

npm test

This starts the web service server from a clean start and tests questions, question comments, answers and answer comments and the integration of such.

The test script can also be executed in a two-step process with 2 shells:

node index -r
node test

Shell script

A shell script, bin/demo.sh, provides a series of cURL commands that request each endpoint of the web service.

JSLint conformance script

To test the conformance of the code to JSLint, run bin/jslint-check.sh. Before running, ensure you have globally installed JSLint: npm install jslint -g.