plutonium

A hackathon project submitted to InMobi Hack Day Spring 2016.

Find the submission on devpost, extracted description below.

Inspiration

Creating APIs is always a time consuming task not just because it involves a lot of coding but because of other trivial aspects such as setting up http-powered server environments, management of function calls, mapping of url-end points, version control among many other things.

As developers we often find ourselves dedicating more time and resources in setting up environments for the API rather than programming core functionality.

Also, for first-timers, creating an API framework is a daunting task. The case only worsens if you have no background in computer programming at all.

We feel that there should exist a platform that easily allows users to focus on innovating functional logic rather than the nitty-gritties of backend development.

What it does

pinkhelium is a web-powered platform that helps you create APIs on the fly. All a user needs to do is use an intuitive interface to provide core functionality of endpoint methods and our platform delivers a packaged framework which gets deployed to any cloud platform at the click of a button. The packaged framework is available to the user through github and can also be expanded/customized further, if desired.

How we built it

Our platform is completely coded and built using open-source technologies including but not restricted to Linux, python, angular.JS, node.js and HTML5. The front-end part of our platform relies heavily on angular.js based client-side interactions. The back-end part of our platform utilizes the simplicity and elegance of the Linux platform powered by python based server automation and interactions.

Challenges we ran into

• Automation of creating and maintaining repositories.
• Automation of API version control and documentation.
• Cloud-side deployment of generated API.
• FIREWALLS on CLOUD ENVIRONMENTS!
• Handling internal API endpoints for the platform to communicate smoothly with the front end.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

• deployed a working prototype of our API conception, development and deployment platform.
• Used pinkhelium platform to host a capable media server deployed on Amazon's AWS EC2.
• STAYED UP FOR 24 HOURS!!
• Created a full featured mobile app.
• pulling it off! :)

What we learned

• Robustness of python as a language for code/api generation and exposure.
• LOCALTUNNEL!
• streamlining rapid app development and code management through github.

What's next for pinkhelium

• open-source the platform code so that those who want to remix our platform can do so, without hassles.
• Encourage community development of API functions.
• One click deployment options for more cloud platforms including Bluemix, Cloudera, Heroku, Azure etc.
• Support for more programming languages.
• Efficient streamlining of chaintools for building.
• Integrating support for popular databases, especially nosql based ones.
• pinkhelium-cli tools for the seasoned developer.

Built With

• python
• node.js
• shell
• git
• heroku
• AngularJS 1
• Bootstrap
• falcon
• hug