Tic-Tac-Toe API

API server back-end for Backbone.js Tic-Tac-Toe apps created as part of the Ada Developers Academy curriculum.

API Specification

The Tic-Tac-Toe API is responsible for tracking a history of played games. Each game is recorded on the server with its final game board (the location of each X or O on the board), the game outcome (win or draw), the date when the game was completed, and the names of the participants.

Overview

The API communicates solely through JSON-encoded messages and provides four routes for working with Game data:

• List all games - Retrieves an index of all recorded Games. Each entry in the response array is a summary of the games (it does not include the final game board).
• Game details - Retrieves the complete details of a single Game, including the final game board.
• Create a game - Records a new, completed Game. Details of the game (as specified below) must be sent as a JSON-encoded document.
• Delete a game - Removes a previously recorded Game from the API.

JSON Schema

Game

This API only has a single model, Game, with the following properties:

• id - A positive integer that uniquely identifies the game within this API. NOTE: When POSTing a new game to the API this property is ignored if it was supplied.
• board - An array of strings, exactly 9 elements long. Each string within the array is either "X", "O", or " " (blank) and corresponds to the contents of a specific cell on the game board. The array is two dimensional in row-major order (see diagram below for clarification).
• players - An array of strings, exactly 2 elements long. Each string corresponds to the name of a single player for this game. The first element is always the player represented by X on the board, and the second element is always the player represented by O on the board. NOTE: The second player's name is strictly optional, and will default to "Anonymous" if unspecified when POSTing a new game to the API.
• outcome - A string representing the result of the game. The only valid values are "X" (for X winning), "O" (for O winning), and "draw" (for a tie).
• played_at - A date & time representing when the game was completed and recorded by the API. Because JSON does not have a built-in date datatype this property is encoded as a string using the ISO 8601 format. NOTE: This property is optional when POSTing a new game to the API. The server will use the current date & time if one is not provided.

An example of a complete Game model encoded in JSON:

{
  "id": 1,
  "board": [
    "X",
    " ",
    "O",
    "X",
    "O",
    " ",
    "X",
    " ",
    " "
  ],
  "players": [
    "X Player",
    "O Player"
  ],
  "outcome": "X",
  "played_at": "2016-11-20T22:59:10Z"
}

This data corresponds to the following final game board between two players, X Player and O Player:

X		O
X	O
X

Game Board

The array of strings for board in the Game model is mapped to locations on the Tic-Tac-Toe game board using zero indexing:

0	1	2
3	4	5
6	7	8

Error

When a request is made to the API that results in an error with user-meaningful details, those details will be communicated in the response data using the following form:

{
  "errors": [
    "Error message 1",
    "Error message 2",
    ...
    "Error message N"
  ]
}

API Reference

This is a complete reference to the Tic-Tac-Toe API version 1. All request and response data must be encoded in JSON.

List all games

GET /api/v1/games

Request

Parameters

None.

Data

None.

Response

Status code

The status code for a successful request will be 200.

Data

A list of Game objects. Each Game object will only have the "summary" information for that game, meaning it will not include the board property.

Errors

The following status codes may be returned in the event of an error:

• 500 in the event of an unexpected server error.

Game details

GET /api/v1/games/{game_id}

Request

Parameters

The ID of an existing game. This value must be acquired by first requesting a list of games and using one of the IDs from within that list.

Data

None.

Response

Status code

The status code for a successful request will be 200.

Data

A single Game object. This object has the complete details for the game, including the board property.

Errors

The following status codes may be returned in the event of an error:

• 404 when the requested Game is not found.
• 500 in the event of an unexpected server error.

Create a game

POST /api/v1/games

Request

Parameters

None.

Data

A single Game object, without the id property.

Response

Status code

The status code for a successful request will be 201.

Data

A single Game object (the one that was created). This object has the complete details for the game, including the board property.

Errors

The following status codes may be returned in the event of an error:

• 400 when the provided Game properties are invalid. The response data will be an Error object with strings for each failed validation.
• 500 when the Game was not saved due to an unexpected server error.

Delete a game

DELETE /api/v1/games/{game_id}

Request

Parameters

The ID of an existing game. This value must be acquired by first requesting a list of games and using one of the IDs from within that list.

Data

None.

Response

Status code

The status code for a successful request will be 204.

Data

None.

Errors

The following status codes may be returned in the event of an error:

• 404 when the requested Game is not found.
• 500 in the event of an unexpected server error.

Development

Setup

1. Fork and clone this repository to your own account
2. Run bundle install to download gem dependencies

• If you do not have Postgres installed on your development machine, run bundle install --without production instead.

1. Run rails server to start the development server.
2. Run rails console to access a REPL running in the Rails context.

Tests

Run rails test to run the full test suite.

Deployment

This API can be deployed to Heroku with the following commands (assuming you have the Heroku CLI installed):

$ heroku create
$ heroku run bundle exec rails db:schema:load
$ heroku open

The last command will open a browser window with your API endpoint as the URL. This API is not designed to be meaningful to people accessing it via the browser, but it does give you the correct hostname to use when integrating your deployed instance into other applications.