Progress Update on Beekeeping API – Phase 2 Complete!

Hey everyone! I’m thrilled to share that Phase 2 of my Beekeeping API project is fully complete. This simple RESTful API, built in Go, is now up and running, serving hardcoded senseBox data for beekeeping monitoring. It’s been a fun journey getting it working, pushing it to GitHub, and setting up the foundation for future enhancements. Here’s the full rundown of what I’ve accomplished:

What’s Done in Phase 1?

The goal of Phase 1 was to create a basic API that retrieves senseBox data by ID. Here’s what I’ve built:

1. Core API Setup
   • Wrote a Go application using gorilla/mux for routing.
   • Implemented a GET /api/v1/sensebox/{id} endpoint that returns JSON data (e.g., {“id”: “5eba5fbad46fb8001b799786”, “temperature”: 22.5, “humidity”: 60}) for a hardcoded senseBox ID.
   • Organized the code into modular files: main.go, handler.go, sensebox.go, and version.go, all under package main.
2. Versioning
   • Added a –version flag that prints App Version: v0.0.1 and exits, following Semantic Versioning. You can test it with go run main.go –version.
3. Tools
   • Used Git for version control, VS Code as my IDE, and Docker for containerization. These tools have made development smooth and deployment portable.
4. Containerization
   • Created a Dockerfile with a multi-stage build to package the app into a lightweight container. Build and run it with:bashdocker build -t beekeeping-api:latest . docker run -p 8080:8080 beekeeping-api:latest
   • The API is accessible at http://localhost:8080.
5. Git and GitHub
   • Set up a .gitignore file to exclude binaries (e.g., beekeeping-api) and temporary files, while keeping go.mod and go.sum tracked for reproducibility.
   • Pushed the project to my GitHub repository: https://github.com/ref34t/beekeeping-api. Check it out!
6. Testing
   • Ran the app locally and tested it with curl:bashcurl http://localhost:8080/api/v1/sensebox/5eba5fbad46fb8001b799786Output: {“id”:”5eba5fbad46fb8001b799786″,”temperature”:22.5,”humidity”:60}
   • Tested an invalid ID (curl http://localhost:8080/api/v1/sensebox/invalid) and got SenseBox not found as expected.
   • Confirmed the Docker container works the same way.

Challenges Faced

• Undefined Function Error: I hit a snag with undefined: getSenseBoxData because of file setup issues. Turns out, keeping everything in package main in the same directory fixed it—no imports needed!
• Docker Setup: Writing the Dockerfile took some tweaking to get the multi-stage build right, but it’s now efficient and small.
• Git Configuration: Figuring out .gitignore was a learning moment—committing go.mod and go.sum ensures others can build the project exactly as I do.

The Full File Structure

Here’s what’s in the repo:

beekeeping-api/
├── .gitignore     # Excludes binaries and temp files
├── main.go        # Server setup and routing
├── handler.go     # GET endpoint logic
├── sensebox.go    # SenseBox data model
├── version.go     # Versioning function
├── Dockerfile     # Docker configuration
├── go.mod         # Module definition
├── go.sum         # Dependency checksums
└── README.md      # Project docs