Gain's Game of Life Service

This is a very simple service that we use as an interview exercise. This is a Conway's Game of Life environment generator and viewer. (Note: it does not evaluate the world)

It supports four API endpoints, all accessible via simple GETs and POSTs.

The live server is available at https://game-of-life-service-ai3nmiz7aa-uc.a.run.app.

1. GET /world

will return a 302 redirect to a url to create a unique world.

2. GET /world/:id

Will return a json object for a world seeded with this id. The response contains 4 keys, all of these will vary based on the id generated.

• id – the unique ID for this world
• generationCount – the number of generations to run on this world
• size – the height and width of this world, note it's always a square, so only a single number is returned.
• world – a 2 dimensional array filled with 1 to denote life and 0 for no life.

{
  "id": "abc123",
  "generationCount": 5,
  "size": 5,
  "world": [[1,0,0,0,1],
            [1,0,0,1,1],
            [1,0,1,0,0],
            [1,1,0,1,1],
            [1,0,1,0,0]]
}

With this information you can now build a really fun game of life simulator in any language you'd like.

3. POST /results

A post to this endpoint with the correct JSON body will save the results, and redirect you to the viewer for your run. This endpoint expects a post body with the following keys:

• id - the id received from the server to generate the starting world
• generationCount – the number of generations you ran.
• generations - an array of worlds (2d array), each one representing a generation (tick or run) of the world following conway's game of life rules

If the JSON post is correct, it will respond with a 302 redirect to a webpage that allows you to explore your results.

Below is a sample response to this endpoint (note in this example the generations do not match the game of life rules.)

{
  "id": "abc123",
  "generationCount": 5,
  "generations": [
    [[1,0,0,0,1],
     [1,0,0,1,1],
     [1,0,1,0,0],
     [1,1,0,1,1],
     [1,0,1,0,0]],
    [[1,0,0,0,1],
     [1,0,0,1,1],
     [1,0,1,0,0],
     [1,1,0,1,1],
     [1,0,1,0,0]],
    [[1,0,0,0,1],
     [1,0,0,1,1],
     [1,0,1,0,0],
     [1,1,0,1,1],
     [1,0,1,0,0]],
    [[1,0,0,0,1],
     [1,0,0,1,1],
     [1,0,1,0,0],
     [1,1,0,1,1],
     [1,0,1,0,0]],
    [[1,0,0,0,1],
     [1,0,0,1,1],
     [1,0,1,0,0],
     [1,1,0,1,1],
     [1,0,1,0,0]],
  ]
}

4. GET /viewer/:id

Access this via a browser to interact with the runs of your latest submission. The id is the unique returned from a correct submission to POST /results.

Local Development

1. Clone the code, git clone [email protected]:GainCompliance/game-of-life-service.git
2. Install npm dependencies npm install
3. Copy .env.example to .env and update the values
4. Run with npm run dev

Deployment

Commits to main will automatically be deployed to https://game-of-life-service-ai3nmiz7aa-uc.a.run.app