User Record API

A RESTful API for managing user records.

Developer Setup

Requirements:

This project uses SQLite: this is for demo & local testing purposes only, and not intended for use in production.

A Python virtualenv is recommended for local development:

$ virtualenv --python python3.4 env

Activate the project's virtualenv:

$ source env/bin/activate

With the virtualenv active, install dependencies:

$ pip install -r requirements.txt

The first time you run the service locally, you'll need to setup the local database schema:

$ python manage.py migrate

Once that's complete, you can run the development server:

$ python manage.py runserver

With the local dev server running, you can access the API via normal means, e.g.,:

$ curl localhost:8000/api/users

You can also interactively browse the API & its documentation in your browser, at localhost:8000/api/users and localhost:8000/api/groups.

To run the tests, use Tox. If Tox is not already installed, you can install it with:

$ pip install tox

(For more info on Tox, or help installing, see here)

With Tox installed, from within the project root do:

$ tox

This project is just a demo, and not intended for use in production.

Some notes & points of consideration for "real world" application.

secrets: in any other situation, a secure SECRET_KEY (for project-level settings.py) value should be generated locally, and stored outside of the repo. Similarly, database and related credentials should be kept private.
authentication: here, all CRUD actions are accessible by anonymous users: real-world use would want authentication for at least some actions implemented.
updating groups: since the spec states an update to a group name consists of "a json list describing the group's members", and not a full group record, some users may expect this to happen via PATCH instead of PUT.
debug mode: For production, in settings.py, DEBUG should be set to FALSE. This will also require properly configuring & deploying static files (specifics depend on production setup)