impossibilicus-api

This is the simplest possible API to interact with the UI in impossibilicus-web

Documentation of Libraries Used

• Flask - minimal python web framework
• Flask-RESTful - library that adds helpful REST conventions to Flask

Requirements

• Python 2.7
• Python's pip library
  • It might be installed with Python already - try just running the command pip to test
  • If that fails, Pip Installation Guide
• virtualenv (Flask's documentation on virtualenv is my favorite)
• MongoDB (Documentation), confirm installation by running mongod

Starting the API

• Start Mongo with mongod (if you're running Mongo locally, otherwise it just needs environment varibles set to reference the hosted DB)
• From the project directory, create/activate a virtual environment (step-by-step instructions also in Flask's virtualenv docs)
• Install the project dependencies with pip install -r requirements.txt
• Environment variables that need to be set for the app to work: MONGODB_URI, MONGO_USERNAME (these live permanently in Heroku, I'm not committing them because even though this is private now, something something commit history)
  • Optionally, FLASK_DEBUG=1 to enable flask's debug mode, which will live update the app when changes are made and display more detailed error outputs
• Start the API with python app.py
• Confirm that it is running by accessing http://localhost:5000/
• Use any REST client to make API calls (I use Insomnia)

Deploying

• Application is automatically deployed on Heroku when a new commit is pushed to master. The web app that interacts with this API can be found here: https://immense-oasis-52264.herokuapp.com/

MongoDB Commands

• Connect (requires Mongo installed): mongo ds147510.mlab.com:47510/database_name -u username -p password
• Empty out a collection ("story"): db.story.remove({})