ASCII canvas

Server

For simplicity, there is an assumption that (in dev and test mode) you're running the server on a machine with PostgreSQL server installed and listening on the default port (5432). It should allow "trust" authentication with your current system user, which is the default behavior. Should this assumption not apply, you need to specify your database connection properties in the server/config/dev.exs file.

To start the server:

Go to the server folder
Install dependencies with mix deps.get
Create and migrate the database with mix ecto.setup
Start Phoenix endpoint with mix phx.server or inside IEx with iex -S mix phx.server

Now you can send requests to localhost:4000 from the client.

To run the tests:

Go to the server folder
Install dependencies with mix deps.get
Create and migrate the database with mix ecto.setup
Run mix test

API

To test-drive the app, I recommend using the interactive version of the client, which you can find in the interactive-client branch (see below). It's probably more convenient than making direct API calls.

The API endpoints are described below. The data is exchanged in the JSON format, so don't forget to always provide the appropriate Accept and Content-Type HTTP headers.

Create a new canvas

Request: POST /canvases

Example response: {"id": "e15ea634-094f-46a4-8cff-cddbbcd03505"}

Draw a rectangle

Request: POST /canvases/:id/rectangles

Example request data:

{
  "offset_top": 2,
  "offset_left": 3,
  "height": 5,
  "width": 3,
  "fill_character": "X",
  "outline_character": "@"
}

Response: empty, only status 200

Fetch a canvas

Request: GET /canvases/:id

Example response:

{
  "id": "e15ea634-094f-46a4-8cff-cddbbcd03505",
  "rectangles": [
    {
      "offset_top": 2,
      "offset_left": 3,
      "height": 5,
      "width": 3,
      "fill_character": "X",
      "outline_character": "@"
    },
    {
      "offset_top": 3,
      "offset_left": 10,
      "height": 14,
      "width": 6,
      "fill_character": "O",
      "outline_character": "X"
    }
  ]
}

Client

By default, the client expects the server to be available at http://localhost:4000. Should you need the server to be at a different location, please, specify it in the environment variable CANVAS_SERVER_URL.

To use the client:

Go to the client folder
Install dependencies with mix deps.get
Build the binary file with ``./build.sh`
Render a canvas with ./canvas_client render 9304172c-baa5-4333-ba9e-3d6f0d93348b