todo-rest

A simple Python Flask REST API for keeping notes.

Installation

Use python3 with requirements in requirements.txt.

git clone https://github.com/max-kov/todo-rest.git
python3 -m venv ./.venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

To run:

python3 api.py

Technical details

API is written using the Flask library, because its minimal nature fits the task. On the other hand, this API might not scale too well because of python's nature to be slow. Both python and flask are very popular programming tools, which means the tool is stable and any common problems have been documented online.

API overview

Saving notes is done through a POST request. Example: curl -i -H "Content-Type: application/json" -X POST -d '"asdf"' localhost:5000
Viewing notes is done through a GET request. Example: curl -i localhost:5000/ or curl -i localhost:5000/0 for the first note.
Deleting notes is done through a DELETE request. Example: curl -i -H "Content-Type: application/json" -X DELETE localhost:5000/0 to delete the first note.
Updating notes is done through a PUT request. Example: curl -i -H "Content-Type: application/json" -X PUT -d '"asdf"' localhost:5000/0
Archiving notes is done through a PUT request to the /archive endpoint. Example: curl -i -H "Content-Type: application/json" -X PUT localhost:5000/archive/0

Conundrums

I really wanted to join the update_note and archive_note into the same endpoint. I wanted to do that because technically they both update the state of a note. One solution I thought of initially was to pass keyword parameters "archive" and "edit" along with the request, but I ended up splitting those two methods in the end.

Additionally, it may make sense to split the api.py file into two files - one that handles the app initialisation and another that has endpoint functions, but since the file isn't too big (and the app initialisation part is not too pronounced), this isn't much of a problem.

Improvements

Useful technology

Database (instead of storing data in the Notes class, which is bad because the data is lost with server restarts)
Docker (for easier deployment and separation of dependancies)

Additional features

User logins
Display archived notes

Potential problems

Sequential note IDs (may be bad because without restricting access to notes someone can scrape all notes just by increasing the note ID in the request)
Security holes (users submit text, therefore we have to think about how we store and display it. Stuff like SQL injections and cross-site scripting attacks)