Peepr v0.1

A very crude simple social stream API.
Done in time constraint of a few hours on Saturday, the weekend.
Was a quick and dirty burn and crash - “we-need-to-have-something-running-by-today!!” development process, including learning Flask, rebrushing PostgreSQL and SQL skills as I go.
However, I did retain proper coding and code reuse as much as time and the microframework I was using permitted. Used as much support as provided by DB API 2.0 PostgreSQL python driver (-paging a notable example).
I decided to use Flask as it seems very light and easy to mold to crash burn development, it was also fun using it! (-as flask allows you to stay low level in Python without dealing with cruft of full blown MVCs giving great control).
It is assumed there’s no need for user authentication and authorization.
Error management is delegated to the RDBMS used (PostgreSQL) , and bubbled up through the Python exception mechanism. This works well since proper HTTP response codes are always returned accordingly - excellent if are in the “we-need-to-have-something-running-by-today” stress.
Deployed to Heroku, using PostgreSQL hosted in Amazon EC2 through Heroku plugin (https://postgres.heroku.com/)
REST is assumed, as in every request must encapsulate state.
All arguments are passed through query strings.
Responses are JSON for data.
Named ‘Peeper’ for obvious reasons , or not?! :-D

Usage

http://peeper.herokuapp.com/get_feed/user_id
- Get the feed for user specified by user_id , e.g. get all the peeps users users_id follows did recently.
- optional request parameter: max_returned , to specify how many backward entries to return. defaults to 20.
http://peeper.herokuapp.com/create_user/username
- creates a new userid.
- returns the newly created userid in JSON.
'http://peeper.herokuapp.com/post_message/user_id?message_text=”your message”'
- posts a new message by the user user_id, text need be passed through message_text argument and escaping for spaces and such need be taken care of before POSTing.
'http://peeper.herokuapp.com/(un)follow/username1?followed_user=username2'
- enables or disables following of user by username1 of user by username2
http://peeper.herokuapp.com/get_global_feed
- returns the global feed of all recenet pees posted, same rules apply for max_returned as in get_feed.