MemGator

A Memento Aggregator CLI and Server in Go.

Features

• The binary (available for various platforms) can be used as the CLI or run as a Web Service
• Results available in three formats - Link/JSON/CDXJ
• TimeMap, TimeGate, and Memento (redirect or description) endpoints
• Optional streaming of benchmarks over Server-Sent Events (SSE) for realtime visualization and monitoring
• Good API parity with the main Memento Aggregator service
• Concurrent - Splits every session in subtasks for parallel execution
• Parallel - Utilizes all the available CPUs
• Custom archive list (a local JSON file or a remote URL) - a sample JSON is included in the repository
• Probability based archive prioritization and limit
• Three levels of customizable timeouts for greater control over remote requests
• Customizable logging and profiling in CDXJ format
• Customizable endpoint URLs - helpful in load-balancing
• Customizable User-Agent to be sent to each archive and User-Agent spoofing
• Configurable archive failure detection and automatic hibernation
• CORS support to make it easy to use it from JavaScript clients
• Memento count exposed in the header that can be retrieved via HEAD request
• Docker friendly - An image available as ibnesayeed/memgator
• Sensible defaults - Batteries included, but replaceable

Usage

CLI

Command line interface of MemGator allows retrieval of the TimeMap and the description of the closest Memento (equivalent to the TimeGate) over STDOUT in all supported formats. Logs and benchmarks (in verbose mode) and Error output are available on STDERR unless appropriate files are configured. For further details, see the full usage.

$ memgator [options] {URI-R}                            # TimeMap from CLI
$ memgator [options] {URI-R} {YYYY[MM[DD[hh[mm[ss]]]]]} # Description of the closest Memento from CLI

Server

When run as a Web Service, MemGator exposes following customizable endpoints:

$ memgator [options] server
TimeMap   : http://localhost:1208/timemap/{FORMAT}/{URI-R}
TimeGate  : http://localhost:1208/timegate/{URI-R} [Accept-Datetime]
Memento   : http://localhost:1208/memento[/{FORMAT}|proxy]/{DATETIME}/{URI-R}
Benchmark : http://localhost:1208/monitor [SSE]

# FORMAT          => link|json|cdxj
# DATETIME        => YYYY[MM[DD[hh[mm[ss]]]]]
# Accept-Datetime => Header in RFC1123 format

• TimeMap endpoint serves an aggregated TimeMap for a given URI-R in accordance with the Memento RFC. Additionally, it makes sure that the Mementos are chronologically ordered. It also provides the TimeMap data serialized in additional experimental formats.
• TimeGate endpoint allows datetime negotiation via the Accept-Datetime header in accordance with the Memento RFC. A successful response redirects to the closes Memento (to the given datetime) using the Location header. The default datetime is the current time. A successful response also includes a Link header which provides links to the first, last, next, and previous Mementos.
• Memento endpoint allows datetime negotiation in the request URL itself for clients that cannot easily send custom request headers (as opposed to the TimeGate which requires the Accept-Datetime header). This endpoint behaves differently based on whether the format was specified in the request. It essentially splits the functionality of the TimeGate endpoint as follows:
• If a format is specified, it returns the description of the closest Memento (to the given datetime) in the specified format. It is essentially the same data that is available in the Link header of the TimeGate response, but as the payload in the format requested by the client.
• If a format is not specified, it redirects to the closest Memento (to the given datetime) using the Location header.
• If the term proxy is used instead of a format then it acts like a proxy for the closest original unmodified Memento with added CORS headers.
• Benchmark is an optional endpoint that can be enabled by the --monitor flag when the server is started. If enabled, it provides a stream of the benchmark log over SSE for realtime visualization and monitoring.

NOTE: A fallback endpoint /api is added for compatibility with Time Travel APIs to allow drop-in replacement in existing tools. This endpoint is an alias to the /memento endpoint that returns the description of a Memento.

Download and Install

Depending on the machine and operating system download appropriate binary from the releases page. Change the mode of the file to executable chmod +x MemGator-BINARY. Run from the current location of the downloaded binary or rename it to memgator and move it into a directory that is in the PATH (such as /usr/local/bin/) to make it available as a command.

Running as a Docker Container

The first command below is not necessary, but it allows pulling the latest version of the MemGator Docker image.

$ docker pull ibnesayeed/memgator
$ docker run ibnesayeed/memgator -h
$ docker run ibnesayeed/memgator [options] {URI-R}
$ docker run ibnesayeed/memgator [options] {URI-R} {YYYY[MM[DD[hh[mm[ss]]]]]}
$ docker run ibnesayeed/memgator [options] server

Full Usage

MemGator {Version}
   _____                  _______       __
  /     \  _____  _____  / _____/______/  |___________
 /  Y Y  \/  __ \/     \/  \  ___\__  \   _/ _ \_   _ \
/   | |   \  ___/  Y Y  \   \_\  \/ __ |  | |_| |  | \/
\__/___\__/\____\__|_|__/\_______/_____|__|\___/|__|

Usage:
  memgator [options] {URI-R}                            # TimeMap from CLI
  memgator [options] {URI-R} {YYYY[MM[DD[hh[mm[ss]]]]]} # Description of the closest Memento from CLI
  memgator [options] server                             # Run as a Web Service

Options:
  -A, --agent=MemGator:{Version} <{CONTACT}>  User-agent string sent to archives
  -a, --arcs=http://git.io/archives           Local/remote JSON file path/URL for list of archives
  -b, --benchmark=                            Benchmark file location - Defaults to Logfile
  -c, --contact=@WebSciDL                     Email/URL/Twitter handle - used in the user-agent
  -D, --static=                               Directory path to serve static assets from
  -d, --dormant=15m0s                         Dormant period after consecutive failures
  -F, --tolerance=-1                          Failure tolerance limit for each archive
  -f, --format=Link                           Output format - Link/JSON/CDXJ
  -H, --host=localhost                        Host name - only used in web service mode
  -k, --topk=-1                               Aggregate only top k archives based on probability
  -l, --log=                                  Log file location - defaults to STDERR
  -m, --monitor=false                         Benchmark monitoring via SSE
  -P, --proxy=http://{HOST}[:{PORT}]{ROOT}    Proxy URL - defaults to host, port, and root
  -p, --port=1208                             Port number - only used in web service mode
  -R, --root=/                                Service root path prefix
  -r, --restimeout=1m0s                       Response timeout for each archive
  -S, --spoof=false                           Spoof each request with a random user-agent
  -T, --hdrtimeout=30s                        Header timeout for each archive
  -t, --contimeout=5s                         Connection timeout for each archive
  -V, --verbose=false                         Show Info and Profiling messages on STDERR
  -v, --version=false                         Show name and version

Build

Assuming that Git and Go (version >= 1.7) are installed, the GOPATH environment variable is set to the Go Workspace directory as described in the How to Write Go Code, and PATH includes $GOPATH/bin. Cloning, building, and running the code can be done using following commands:

$ cd $GOPATH
$ go get github.com/oduwsdl/memgator
$ go install github.com/oduwsdl/memgator
$ memgator http://example.com/

To compile cross-platform binaries, go to the MemGator source directory and run the crossbuild.sh script:

$ cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/oduwsdl/memgator
$ ./crossbuild.sh

This will generate various binaries in /tmp/mgbins directory.

Citing Project

A publication related to this project appeared in the proceedings of JCDL 2016 (Read the PDF). Please cite it as below:

Sawood Alam, Michael Nelson. MemGator - A Portable Concurrent Memento Aggregator: Cross-Platform CLI and Server Binaries in Go. In Proceedings of the 16th ACM/IEEE-CS on Joint Conference on Digital Libraries, JCDL 2016, pp. 243-244, Newark, New Jersey, USA, June 2016.

@inproceedings{jcdl-2016:alam:memgator,
  author    = {Sawood Alam and
               Michael L. Nelson},
  title     = {{MemGator - A Portable Concurrent Memento Aggregator}},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 16th ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Conference on Digital Libraries},
  series    = {JCDL '16},
  year      = {2016},
  month     = {jun},
  location  = {Newark, New Jersey, USA},
  pages     = {243--244},
  numpages  = {2},
  url       = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2910896.2925452},
  doi       = {10.1145/2910896.2925452},
  isbn      = {978-1-4503-4229-2},
  publisher = {ACM},
  address   = {New York, NY, USA}
}