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-- RMU SESSION 3 PROBLEM 1

If in doubt about how to submit, see SUBMISSION_GUIDELINES file.

In this exercise, we'll be taking ordinary Ruby libraries and giving them nice
web service APIs.  The goal will be to experiment a bit with building 
web services and clients, as well as integrating with some third party software.

This exercise is pretty open ended, but please follow the guidelines listed
below.

== GUIDELINES

- You will be building two things: An HTTP based web service that interacts with
  an open source Ruby library of your choosing, and a simple client to consume
  your service.  Your client code should go in a folder called client/ and your
  server code should be in a folder called server/

- On the server side, you may use any web framework you'd like, but either
  Sinatra or Rails 3 are recommended.

- On the client side, you may use any HTTP client you'd like.  It's recommended
  to take a look at the standard library open-uri, as well as the ruby gems
  rest-client and httparty.

- You may use any data serialization format you'd like, but JSON is preferred
  over YAML and XML.  Not all services will require data serialization, of
  course.

- It's mostly up to you as to what your web service does, as long as it
  integrates in a non-trivial way with some third party library. It could either
  simply map remote calls to the underlying library's API, or do some
  interesting that's built on top of the library you use.

- Use idiomatic Ruby conventions as much as possible.  Throughout the session, 
  writing code well is as important as meeting the requirements.  But don't be
  afraid to ask for help, perfection is not expected in a first submission.

- Try to pick a realistic project, one that someone might actually want to use.
  Avoid contrived scenarios where possible.  Include a good example file that
  demonstrates your client interacting with your server.

- Avoid duplicating the work of other students.  Announce on the mailing list
  what you're planning to build, and add a description to the notes section 
  on the assignment's page in university-web.

== EXAMPLES

The following two projects meet the guidelines described above.

- A Sinatra based web service that returns a nicely formatted PDF report when 
  given some JSON data.

- A Rails 3 web service that converts Markdown formatted text into HTML.

Please come up with a project of your own, and if in doubt, just ask whether the
idea is reasonable.

== QUESTIONS?

Hit up the mailing list or IRC.  RMU exercises are left deliberately open ended,
and often benefit from some discussion before, during, and after you work on
them.

If you have little experience with web programming, please let me know and I'll
collect some resources for you to get you up to speed.  Not a ton of knowledge
is needed to work through this exercise.