/chatter

Chatter - A simple social network

Primary LanguageJava

Chatter

The Chatter Web Project was developed in the Cloud Computing course at Boise State University. It was deployed on three separate Ubuntu 14.04 virtual machines, with one database virtual server, and a load balancer server. The load balancer used HAProxy to keep sticky sessions between the load balanced servers. The project was deployed on Tomcat 8 with a Jersey servlet and a JAX-RS RESTful API. The back end used Hibernate with a MySQL database. The front end implemented PureCSS and JQuery.

The project was broken up into three separate services: friend service, tweet service, and monitor service. The friend service, and tweet service were additionally load balanced using a queuing system to respond to requests.

The monitor service keeps stats on all different types of information about Chatter services running. It displayed them for each individual load balanced servers in a dashboard. The dashboard used the Chart.js library to chart statistics in a responsive manner.

Project Structure:

  • pom.xml - Various build dependencies and plugins used to build Chatter

  • ChatterDB2.sql - Database table builds

  • com.andrewcode.queue

    • Controllers

      • MonitorService.java The monitor service that returns the rest values
      • TaskQueue.java The worker tasks queue

    • Models

      • Worker.java The worker that finishes all the work items

    • Utils

      • ProcessingFactory.java The factory that processes the work items
      • ServletContextListener.java The listener that sets up the queue
      • ResolutionException.java When you pass in a wrong value for the qps resolution this is thrown
      • WorkItem.java Worker item interface for work items

    • WorkItems

      • CreateFriendship.java Implemented work item
      • GetIncomingFriends.java Implemented work item
      • Logout.java Implemented work item
      • CreateUser.java Implemented work item
      • GetOutgoingFriends.java Implemented work item
      • PostTweet.java Implemented work item
      • DestroyFriendship.java Implemented work item
      • GetTweet.java Implemented work item
      • RetweetTweet.java Implemented work item
      • DestroyTweet.java Implemented work item
      • GetTweetList.java Implemented work item
      • UsernameLogin.java Implemented work item
      • GetFollowers.java Implemented work item
      • GetUsername.java Implemented work item
      • GetFollowing.java Implemented work item
      • IdLogin.java Implemented work item

  • com.andrewcode.rest

    • Controllers
      • FriendService.Java Handles all of the friendships and followers rest calls
      • TweetService.java Handles all of the tweet related rest calls
      • UserService.java Handles the creation and login of users
    • Models
      • Friends.java Hibernate annotated model of table in MySql database
      • Tweet.java Hibernate annotated model of table in MySql database
      • User.java Hibernate annotated model of table in MySql database
      • Query.java Hibernate annotated model of table in MySql database
      • Error.java Hibernate annotated model of table in MySql database
    • Util
      • FriendException.java Exception handling for FriendService.java
      • TweetException.java Exception handling for TweetService.java
      • UserException.java Exception handing for UserService.java
      • Utils.java Static helper methods that I did not want to copy over and over again

  • Resources

    • hibernate.cfg.xml Hibernate connector for hibernate orm library

  • Webapp

    • css
      • jquery.modal.css CSS files for modals I am using in Views
      • pure-min.css CSS framework used in all views of Chatter
    • img
      • close.png Close icon used for modals
      • spinner.gif Spinner gif used for modals
      • Bridge.png Home page photograph
    • js
      • jquery.modal.min.js Modal javascript code used for modals in Chatter
      • jquery-2.1.1.min.js jQuery used for many post and get calls
      • Chart.js Javascript library for charts used in the dashboard
    • WEB-INF
      • web.xml Configuration file for Chatter
    • about.html About me page
    • friends.html FriendService testing page includes all posts and get tests
    • index.html UserService testing page includes login, create and find users tests
    • tweet.html TweetService testing page includes all tweet method tests
    • dashboard.html Testing page for the newly added monitor
    • monitor.html Front facing page to get you to each individual node's dashboard

Server Layout:

Load Balancer -

CS597-Andrew-Balancer
andrew@132.178.129.1

Database -

CS597-Andrew-Database
andrew@132.178.129.2

Child Nodes -

CS597-Andrew-One
andrew@132.178.128.219

CS597-Andrew-Two
andrew@132.178.129.250

CS597-Andrew-Three
andrew@132.178.129.229

Database Build:

  1. Create a user in mysql with username = root and password = pass
  2. Create a database called chatterDB (mysqladmin -uroot -ppass create chatterDB)
  3. Create all the tables for chatterDB (mysql -uroot -ppass chatterDB < ChatterDB2.sql)

Must then create a username = andrew and password = pass with access to database from the child node ip's.

i.e. The users "Andrew" have access from the host

andrew           | 132.178.128.219       |
andrew           | 132.178.129.229       |
andrew           | 132.178.129.250       |

Project Build:

  1. Run 'mvn clean package'
  2. Change directories to 'target/'
  3. Project was built as 'ROOT.war' (Why ROOT.war? It enables me to deploy Chatter to local host root and not as localhost:8080/Chatter/ Please keep this the same because all jQuery calls are assuming this naming convention.)
  4. Copy 'ROOT.war' to tomcat deployment directory or deploy using the tomcat manager of each child node
  5. Deploy the haproxy.cfg and start ha proxy up
  6. Browse to root (http://CS597-Andrew-Balancer) and Chatter with the monitor should load (Should see a big picture of a bridge)

Project Design:

The existing chatter project will look very similar, but the design of the servers and scaling is very different. The monitor was not very trivial to set up. The first thing I had to do was set up a global database that the three different nodes could connect to. Implementing the load balancer was easy once I figured out how to tell HA Proxy to create a "SEVERID" cookie on the client. This will keep the session the same when accessing the load balancing server. All of this engineering should be completely invisible to the user because of the sticky sessions.

The monitor server is started with the 'queue/' prefix to the url to designate the difference from the rest calls. They accept a 'GET' request with @PathParam annotations. All methods return JSON on success and a WebApplicationException with an error message on an error.

All rest calls have 'rest/' appended to the url to designate rest calls from other web pages in Chatter. All 'POST' calls use the @FormParam and all 'GET' calls use the @PathParam annotations. The project is broken up into three simple services UserService, FriendService, and TweetService. All methods return JSON on success and a WebApplicationException with an error message on an error.

  • MonitorService.java

    • GET monitor/processingtime - Returns an array of average response times in a 10 percentile range
    • GET monitor/queuedepth - Returns the number of elements in the worker task queue
    • GET monitor/qps/{resolution} - Accepts "minutes", "hours", "days", or "months" only. Returns the count of messages past 100 from now. I.e. user types "minutes" and get the count of messages 100 minutes from now.
    • GET monitor/errors/{type} - Accepts a valid HTTP error code, only 400 will return a non-zero. Will return a count of the valid error codes passed in.

  • UserService.java

    • POST users/create/{user-name} - Create a user from specific user name
    • GET users/{users-name} - Get a userId from a user name
    • POST users/login/{userId} - Login passes a userId to set for the session

  • FriendService.Java

    • GET friendships/incoming - Returns the users incoming friendship requests
    • GET friendships/outgoing - Returns the users outgoing friendship requests
    • POST friendships/create - Create a friendship requests if you'd like to accept a friendship request, send a create to that user id
    • POST friendships/destroy - Destroys a friendship completely. Assumed this was a 'unfriend' or 'block' and not just an unfollow
    • GET friends/list - Returns a list of userIds of people who the logged in user is following
    • GET followers/list - Returns a list of userIds of people who are following the logged in user

  • TweetService.java

    • POST tweet/tweet/{msg} - Create a tweet that is less that 128 character from passed in message
    • GET tweet/show/{id} - Get a tweet from a specific id
    • POST tweet/destroy/{id} - Delete a tweet from a specific id
    • POST tweet/retweet/{id} - Retweet takes the tweet message, posts it again with a new tweetId and assigns the userId to the user who created the retweet.

  • Additional Rest End Points:

    • POST users/login/{user-name} - Login passes a user-name instead of a userId because it is easier for a user to remember a user name then a id
    • GET tweet/getTweets - Returns a list of tweet objects for a users feed (i.e. the tweets from the user or tweets from the people the user is following)
    • POST users/logout - Invalidates the users session (Really handy for testing multiple relationships between multiple users)

Comments:

This project was much more challenging then the previous project. I learned a lot about cookies, sessions,and load balancing with the addition of the HAProxy load balancer. I also continued my knowledge of javascript by creating a dash board for the individual servers. I learned a lot about different design patterns and why the one we chose was the best for us. The individual worker task queue is fast, and it leaves less refactoring for us with our existing service. I still need to learn how to secure the server more (XSS, SQL injection) to name a few. Also I will need to learn more AJAX because the dashboard is a bit primitive without AJAX.

Links: