Planet Express

You are contracted to refactor Professor Farnsworth's legacy client/server code, and you decide to spice weasel (BAM!) things up with K8s, gRPC, and GraphQL. The professor wants to run a gateway service at the Planet Express headquarters that can communicate with Planet Express ship via gRPC. Furthermore, he wants a nice React UI to show data about the ship, deliveries, crew members, etc that will communicate with the gateway service via GraphQL.

Setup

When you are done shopping for lightspeed briefs you decide to setup the new project. You realize that some of it is already set up for you. The ./headquarters directory contains the gateway/client code and the ./ship directory contains the server code.

1. Create a gitlab repo called planet-express
2. Setup Your Dev Environment
   • Install go (https://golang.org/doc/install)
   • Install protoc (https://grpc.io/docs/protoc-installation/)
   • Follow the getting started guide to install the protoc go plugin (https://grpc.io/docs/languages/go/quickstart/)
3. go get google.golang.org/grpc
4. go get github.com/golang/protobuf
5. Copy the files in this repo over to your new repo
6. Run go mod init gitlab.com/<gitlab-username>/planet-express
7. Your go mod should look something like the included _go.mod file (delete this file when done)
8. Fix the import statements in ./ship/main.go and ./headquarters/main.go (the lines commented like so // pb "gitlab.com/<gitlab-username>/planet-express/ship/pkg/planetexpress")
9. Validate that you can build and genarate go code by running make
10. Validate you have the executables ./ship/ship and ./headquarters/headquarters
11. Run the server ./ship/ship and the client ./headquarters/headquarters in separate terminal windows and confirm the output.

Generate Go Code

The protoc compiler with the go plugin will autogenerate client and server grpc stubs for you. Make sure this runs successfully with make

You should try changing the protobuf files in ./proto and re-run make. The generated files are put in ./ship/pkg/planetexpress and ./headquarters/pkg/planetexpress

Build

A makefile has been provided for you that will generate go code with the protoc compiler and build the executables. Run make and validate that you have executables at ./ship/ship and ./headquarters/headquarters

Using Docker

To run the server (./ship) using Docker, run make docker and the server will start on port 10000.

Your Assignment

Time Estimate: 3 hours

The basic client and server code has been provided for you. Your job is to do the following:

1. Implement crew.proto and delivery.proto and the functions listed in planet_express_service.proto
   • You should experiment with different protobuf types for the crew and delivery resources. Each resource should demonstrate an understanding of protobuf.
2. Refactor ship.proto to use the crew and delivery resources.
3. Implement the rpc functions (defined in planet_express_service.proto) in both the client (./headquarters) and server (./ship), following the GetShip example. You do not need to add a database. Experiment with using data contained in the gRPC request.
4. Output data about the planet express ship, deliveries, and crew members to a json file called planet_express.json. Feel free to get creative with your data and protobuf resources.
5. Add a dockerfile to ./ship so that we can run the server with docker.

Above and Beyond

Time Estimate: 4 hours

1. Provide a basic helm template for the ./ship server. This should contain a kubernetes deployment and service. We should be able to port-forward your service to call the ./ship rpc functions.
2. Add additional protobuf resources like ShipEngine. You can get creative with this.
3. Add GraphQL support to the gateway (headquarters client). A good library for this is https://github.com/graph-gophers/graphql-go
4. Map a graphql resource and endpoint to a gRPC call such that you can use a GraphQL client to get data from the ship backend.

Bite my shiny metal a$$ (extra, extra)

Time Estimate: 4 hours

1. Add a simple React SPA that displays data about the ship using GraphQL to communicate with the gateway (headquarters service). You can put this in the ./dashboard directory.
2. Add some go unit tests to the ship server.

** These would really impress us here at Planet Express! **

Deliverables

Make your repository public and share the repo url with Divvy's recruiter.

Helpful Resources

• https://grpc.io/docs/languages/go/quickstart/
• https://grpc.io/docs/languages/go/basics/
• https://cloud.google.com/apis/design
• https://github.com/graph-gophers/graphql-go
• https://reactjs.org/docs/create-a-new-react-app.html

Questions

If you find errors or otherwise need clarification on anything in the excercise, please reach out to Justin Sharp [email protected].

Implementation

First Task

• Implemented crew.proto and delivery.proto and the functions listed in planet_express_service.proto.
• Added crew and delivery resources to ship.proto
• Implemented rpc functions in client and server
• Outputted data to planet_express.json
• Added Dockerfile to ./ship
• Updated README.md with details on how to run ./ship in a container --> Using Docker

Second Task

• SKIPPED help template
• Added ship_engine and weapon resources and added them to ship.proto
• Added GraphQL support to client (./headquarters)
• Mapped multiple resources and endpoints to gRPC calls

Third Task

• Created React UI for backend services that displays ship, crew, and delivery information
• Added a few unit tests to server (./ship)

Running the Entire Project

After going through Setup, follow these steps to bootstrap the entire project.

• navigate to the root directory
• make
• navigate to the UI directory (./dashboard)
• npm install
• npm start
• Open a new terminal window to the root directory and run ./ship/ship
• Open a new terminal window to the root directory and run ./headquarters/headquarters