Open API Search Project

Note: This project is a work in progress

Live demo available at https://open-api-search.herokuapp.com/

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This project is a Ruby on Rails demo of interacting with a public Cryptocurreny News API and displaying trending coin news to the end user. The following features have been implemented:

• Create a page where a public user can do a keyword search and view results

• A sidebar that shows past searches anyone has done, with a count of how many times it has been run

• Search history only shows unique searches

• Search history is sortable by date/count/search term

• Performing a search displays past information about that search (list of all the previous times that term was searched)

• Clicking on a past search should run it again

Ruby 2.4.4

Rails 5.1.6

Dependencies

This service has dependencies on the following services:

1. Ruby 2.4.4
2. MongoDB
3. Redis
4. Sidekiq

Docker

Follow the Docker Getting Started guide to get docker and docker-compose. This project contains helper scripts to build and test services.

1. Run the test suite: $ script/test

Local development

To start the application using docker compose locally:

1. Start the services: $ docker-compose up --build
2. Access via browser: $ open http://localhost:3000

Local development (without Docker)

To start the application from project folder:

1. Start Redis: $ redis-server
2. Start Sidekiq: $ bundle exec sidekiq
3. Start App: $ rails s
4. Access via browser: $ open http://localhost:3000

Database

MongoDB was used in order to store third-party API responses in the collections.

Setup

1. docker-compose run app rake db:mongoid:create_indexes (Docker)
2. db:mongoid:create_indexes (Local)

Environment Variables

Variable	Description	Default
MONGODB_URI	MongoDB URI	mongodb://localhost:27017/crypto_news_development
REDIS_CACHE_URL	Redis Cache URL (NOT USED CURRENTLY)	redis://localhost:6379/0
REDIS_WORKER_URL	Redis Worker URL (NOT USED CURRENTLY)	redis://localhost:6379/1
DB_MAX_CONNECTIONS	Mongo Max Connections	16
DB_MIN_CONNECTIONS	Mongo Min Connections	5
DB_WAIT_QUEUE_TIMEOUT	DB Queue Timeout	5
DB_CONNECT_TIMEOUT	DB Connection Timeout	10
DB_SOCKET_TIMEOUT	DB Socket Timeout	5
CRYPTO_CONTROL_API_KEY	Crypto Control Api Key	-

Future Considerations

1. DB Indexes on Search#keywords for faster queries and to not query the whole DB for each request
2. Cache external results so the API is not being hit every request
3. Autocomplete for Search feature to prevent invalid search terms from occurring
4. Test frequency of new articles to determine if scheduled jobs for popular search terms are beneficial
5. Search may not need the results saved. Storage can be reduced greatly if not needed

Tradeoffs

1. Specs: Due to time constraints, I decided to forgo testing the UI portion. Requests have been tested, but more detailed testing should be added.
2. Design.. I used this opportunity to test out the Materialize front-end component library and didn't get a chance to do a deep dive of the design components.