This application is an interface to submitting and monitoring jobs sent to a message queue (e.g. RabbitMQ).

Dependencies:

• Postgresql
• RabbitMQ
• PyBit (to be removed)

To install the package, use the following command:

$ python setup.py install

You may need to change the values in pybit.conf. See PyBit's documentation for details.

There is a temporary addition to PyBit's SQL schema that ties into the job information. You'll need to install this using:

$ psql pybit
> \i sql_addtions.sql

And to run the application use the following:

$ pserve production.ini

The API consists of a few routing paths, one for posting and one for checking the status of a job.

• Job creation
• Job status
• Job type information
• Job listing

To create a new job, we post data to / with the following fields and values.

job-type

This is a string of dot separated values. The syntax of this value is as follows: <context>.<platform>.<engine(princexml|latex)>.<format>.

Mutually exclusive fields:

content-url

A URL to a piece of content accesible to the transformation code, which likely means public.

content-body

The raw content.

Optional field for job status updating:

callback-url

A URL that is pinged after the tranformation has been completed. (The details of this callback have not yet been worked out. For example, is this a simple GET against the URL or are we posting info?)

On a successful post response will an HTTP 202 with a URL. The URL can be used by the submitting party to watch the state of the job.

If a problem with the submission occures, an HTTP 400 will result. A response body containing an error message may be supplied, but can not be relied upon.

To watch the status of a submitted job you will need the job id. The path to the status is /status/<job-id>.

This URL will respond with either an HTTP 200 (Success), 202 (Accepted, In progress) or 500 (Error, Failure).

An HTTP 200 means the job has completed and everything went superbly.

An HTTP 202 means the job has not yet commpleted. Accompanying the response is a content body in the JSON format. This content body contains the following values:

tasks-completed

(integer) Number of tasks completed

tasks-total

(integer) Total number of tasks to be completed

messages

(array) Messages in chronilogical order

last-modified

(datetime) Indicates when the last status update was recieved

If the job fails to build due to unforeseen circumstances or author invoked exceptions, the response will be an HTTP 500 with custom response information as well as logging and traceback information if available.

Job type information is represented by a '.' (dot) separated value that closely reflects the message queue exchange naming syntax. For example, cnx..princexml.epub would build a CNX branded EPub using the PrinceXML XML transforms engine. Note the absense of the second value, meaning 'any' value should suffice.

The format of the job type string is as follows: <context>.<platform>.<engine(princexml|latex)>.<format>.

context

A project or suite that may or may not effect layout and branding of the generated content.

platform

A architecture or platform specification. If used, it may effect the dimensions, coloration, interactablity, etc. For example, the 'screenreader' platform may be used to, say make all text and images gray scale.

engine

An XML or data processing engine used to transform XML based content to other formats.

format

The format the transformation should result in.

The values used to represent these options are discoverable via a GET on the application root. The response of this request is a JSON object keyed by option with sub-objects containing the name and descriptions of each value.

The data structure of a GET on '/' looks something like this:

{'context': [{'id': 'cnx', 'name': 'Connexions',
              'description': 'Connexions formatting and branding'},
             {'id': 'openstax', 'name': 'OpenStax College',
              'description': 'OpenStax College formatting'}
              ],
 'platform': [...],
 ...
 }

A GET on '/status' will provide a list of active jobs with their latest status. The response is a JSON list of jobs that resembles the following structure:

{'1': <job-status-object>, '2': <job-status-object>}

And the job-status-object is similar to that returned from the status URL, except it only contains one message rather than the entire message history.

This service is only available to authenticated service members. Unauthenticated members will recieve an HTTP 404 Not Found.

Authentication is done using an API Key. The API Key can be aquired via a connecting Connexions Authentication services instance. Optionally, an API Key may be manually configured in the application settings (no Connexions Authentication service instance required).

The following illustrates an HTTP request using the API Key for authentication and authorization. :

GET /status HTTP/1.1
...
Authorization: Key <api-key-goes-here>
...

Anonymous access to the API can be disabled in the application's configuration. By default, anonymous API calls are allowed, but restrictions apply at the application layer. Additional restrictions may be applied at the webserver layer (contact your system administrator for information).

The following example shows a job submission for a Collection named col10001 version 1.1 at http://cnx.org/content. This job is being submitted for a build of the CompleteZip using the Latex engine and built against Connexions specific context on the desktop platform. :

$ curl --form job-type=cnx.desktop.latex.completezip \
> --form id=col10001 --form version=1.1 \
> --form url=http://cnx.org/content \
> --form content-url=http://cnx.org/content/col10001 \
> http://localhost:6543/
http://localhost:6543/status/7

After the job is submitted we can check it's status using the resulting URL. :

$ curl http://localhost:6543/status/7
{"tasks-completed": 0, "tasks-total": 1,
 "messages": [{"timestamp": "2013-04-30 11:48:53.904134", "message": "", "type": "Waiting"}], 
 "last-modified": "2013-04-30 11:48:53.904134"}

This software is subject to the provisions of the GNU Affero General Public License Version 3.0 (AGPL). See license.txt for details. Copyright (c) 2013 Rice University