README

Requirements:

•	Must be done in Ruby on Rails
•	Accept an address as input
•	Retrieve forecast data for the given address. This should include, at minimum, the current temperature (Bonus points - Retrieve high/low and/or extended forecast)
•	Display the requested forecast details to the user
•	Cache the forecast details for 30 minutes for all subsequent requests by zip codes. Display indicator if result is pulled from cache.

Dependencies

software needed to run, as i'm on mac some of this was installed with homebrew or thru package managers like asdf or rvm, i used a combination of both. Best practice is probably just to use asdf for everything.

node 18.12.1
yarn
ruby 3.2.1
postgresql@15
redis

as i was developing on a m1 macbook i created arm64-darwin-20 version so to be able to deploy on render i needed to run the following commands

bundle lock --add-platform ruby
bundle lock --add-platform x86_64-linux

similarly with the various db/redis/api keys, i used .dotenv locally to store these ENV VARS as secrets and also set them up for render like i would for a production enviroment.

`ENV VARS` needed

WEATHER_RAILS_DATABASE_PASSWORD=xxxxxxxxx
REDIS_URL=redis://server:6379/1
RAILS_MAX_THREADS=4
NODE_ENV=<env>
RACK_ENV=<env>
RAILS_ENV=<env>
GOOGLE_PLACE_API=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
OPEN_WEATHER_API=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

database creation

after setting up postgresql you should be able to run the following:

bundle exec rails db:create 
bundle exec rails db:migrate

running the server locally

i created an alias to made sure webpacker and node ran smoothly, basically adding NODE_OPTIONS=--openssl-legacy-provider if you get issues about openssl and legacy versions. If you don't wanna do that, node 16 or similar will likely work.

In one terminal i'd run NODE_OPTIONS=--openssl-legacy-provider ./bin/webpack-dev-server

another rails s

and when messing with sidekiq in another bundle exec sidekiq

This can also be accomplished with a .proc file and run with foreman

Test Suite

the app is using rspec for testing, following commands will run work for the first run, after that you should just be able to run the rspec command, RAILS_ENV=test bundle exec in front can never hurt too

RAILS_ENV=test bundle exec rails db:create
RAILS_ENV=test bundle exec rails db:migrate
RAILS_ENV=test bundle exec rspec spec/

Services

two APIs were defined for this project as service objects

Open Weather API -- need to sign up for API key for access (is free for light use) Government Weather API -- no API required

there was/is a sidekiq worker to fire off and populate a forecast, but ultimately wasn't used in the final app. the job was left behind for possible future development.

Deployment to Render

this ending up being pretty easy, after creating an account, you can use the free tier for a web service, redis, and postgresql. From there you can connect your github account to render, and use the supplied urls for both psql and redis as env vars.

the live demo is available at weather-rails

might be slow on first boot as app goes to sleep and new container needs to spin up.

danmanstx/weather-rails6