McHacks Mentorship Platform

The one-of-a-kind unique and amazing McHacks mentor dispatching service !

Setup

To set up the package, you'll need a recent version of PostgreSQL, and python 3.

1. Creating the database.

   Open the PostgreSQL REPL and create the mchacks user and database.

   $ psql -U postgres
   
   postgres=# CREATE USER mchacks;
   CREATE USER
   postgres=# CREATE DATABASE mchacks;
   CREATE DATABASE
   postgres=# \q

   Then, load the schema.

   $ psql -U mchacks < docs/design.sql

2. The Python virtual environment.

   Set up a python 3 virtualenv called venv, activate it, and install the required packages.

   $ virtualenv venv --python=/usr/bin/path/to/your/python3/interpreter
   $ source venv/bin/activate
   (venv) $ pip install -r requirements.txt

3. Tell us your secrets.

   You need to write a small configuration module called secret_config.py in the project root. Its contents should look something like the following.

   DATABASE = {
           "user": "mchacks",
           "password": "seeeeekret",
           "name": "mchacks",
           "host": "localhost",
           "active": True
   }
   
   AUTHENTICATION = {
           "username": "1337hacker",
           "password": "sup3rs3cr3t"
   }
   
   SECRET_KEY = "annoy-everyone-with-this-one-weird-trick"

   The AUTHENTICATION dictionary is used for the HTTP basic auth implemented for the administration panel.

   The active key in the DATABASE dictionary is used to determine whether a real database connection should be used (as specified in the DATABASE dictionary), or whether a dummy database should be used.

4. Running the server.

   To run the server, we deploy it with Gunicorn, which will have been installed to your virtualenv by pip. A script gunicorn.sh is provided for your convenience. If you get a failed to bind error message, change the port in gunicorn.sh. You can also configure Gunicorn settings in there.

   $ ./gunicorn.sh

And there you go!

API

1. /api/tickets/list/<status> (GET)

   Fetch tickets of the given type from the database

   Ticket types are:

   • sent: ticket has been opened, but no action has been taken
   • pending: ticket has been reviewed by mentorship admins
   • confirmed: a mentor has been found and dispatched
   • closed: the mentor has visited the requester

   Two special types are provided for convenience:

   • all: get all the tickets, regardless of type
   • open: get all non-closed tickets.

   The returned JSON blob has the following format:

   {
       "records": [ /* array of the matched records */ ],
       "status": "ok" or "failed",
       "message": "a message describing the failure, if any"
   }

   The message field is absent if the status is "ok", and the records field is absent if the status is "failed". In other words, always check the status field.

   Each ticket record has the following format:

   {
       "ticketId": N,
       "ticketContents": "a string",
       "ticketTableNumber": M,
       "ticketStatusName": "the status of the ticket",
       "userId": P,
       "userName": "the username of the submitter",
       "userEmail": "theiremail@somehost.website"
   }

2. /api/tickets/get/<id> (GET)

   Get details on the identified ticket.

   The result is a single ticket record in the format described in /api/tickets/list/<status>.

3. /api/tickets/modify/<id> (POST)

   Change the given ticket's status.

   POST a JSON blob of the following form to this endpoint to set the identified ticket's status.

   {
       "ticketStatusName": "pending" / "closed" / etc.
   }

   Note: this endpoint requires HTTP basic authentication.

4. /api/tickets/delete/<id> (POST)

   Delete the given ticket.

   The body of the request should be empty.

   Note: this endpoint requires HTTP basic authentication.

5. /api/users/delete (POST)

   Delete the user identified by the criterion given in the request body.

   The request body should be JSON representing an object of the following form.

   {
       "userEmail": "email@address.com"
   }

   or

   {
       "userId": 123
   }

   The rationale for allowing both ids and emails is that both are unique.

   Note: this also deletes all the tickets owned by the user.

   Note: this endpoint requires HTTP basic authentication.