Rocket Engines API 🚀

Warning

The data scrapped to the database have been modified several times throughout the code, so keep in mind that the data is a bare approximate and doesn't always reflect real world circumstances.

Introduction

One day an idea came to my mind to create a game that simulate rocket development using real world rocket physics. So naturally a started searching for an API that stores data about orbital rocket engines. I found many APIs related to space launch systems but I was not able to find a proper API that stores in informations about rocket engines. Due to the hard nature of creating a game that simulate rocket development and my limited knowledge in game development I decided to cancel that project and rather decided to focus on making an API that stores orbital rocket engines informations.

Get started

To start serving this API, you should first install GO, then change directory to /API. Then run: go get github.com/mattn/go-sqlite3 after it finishes installing. run the command go run main.go. If everything is alright it should show Server is running on port 8080 after asking you for permition. Make a get request to http://localhost:8080/welcome to get started.

Walkthrough

The data scrapping and the database updating is made using python

• The file scrapper.py returns a function called scrapper(), this is the function that scrappes the net (Wikipedia in this example) for data about the orbitale rocket engines.
• database_updater.py is the python program that updates the database.
• In the folder db there is a file called database.db, this file contains the database of orbital rocket engines.

The API is made using GOlang

• The file API/main.go fetch the data from the database in db/database.db and serve it in JSON format as a Restful API
  • The API runs on port 8080.
  • Currently the API have only two endpoints /engines and /welcome.
  • The API supports two parameters:
    • The id parameter, should be given the number used to identify the engine in the database.
    • The engine parameter, should be given the name of the of the rocket engine.

Usage

First you will have to install GO:

Windows

1. You can download installer GO using the link here.
2. Open the MSI file you downloaded and follow the prompts to install Go. By default, the installer will install Go to Program Files or Program Files (x86). You can change the location as needed. After installing, you will need to close and reopen any open command prompts so that changes to the environment made by the installer are reflected at the command prompt.

MacOS

1. You can download installer GO using the link here.
2. Open the package file you downloaded and follow the prompts to install Go. The package installs the Go distribution to /usr/local/go. The package should put the /usr/local/go/bin directory in your PATH environment variable. You may need to restart any open Terminal sessions for the change to take effect.

Linux

1. Remove any previous Go installation by deleting the /usr/local/go folder (if it exists), then extract the archive you just downloaded into /usr/local, creating a fresh Go tree in /usr/local/go: $ rm -rf /usr/local/go && tar -C /usr/local -xzf go1.22.5.linux-amd64.tar.gz

(You may need to run the command as root or through sudo).

Do not untar the archive into an existing /usr/local/go tree. This is known to produce broken Go installations. 2. Add /usr/local/go/bin to the PATH environment variable. You can do this by adding the following line to your $HOME/.profile or /etc/profile (for a system-wide installation):

export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/go/bin

Note: Changes made to a profile file may not apply until the next time you log into your computer. To apply the changes immediately, just run the shell commands directly or execute them from the profile using a command such as source $HOME/.profile.

How to run it

First you will have to open the terminal in the projects directory, then change the directory to API using the cd ./API command. After that, execute the GOlang file main.go using the command go run main.go, if you get an error telling that a package is required or missing then run go get github.com/mattn/go-sqlite3 (Note that this package requires gcc to be installed). If everything runs smoothly you should get a message Server is running on port 8080, It may ask you for permission so make sure you press allow.

After that you can open your prferred http client and send a get request to http://localhost:8080/welcome, And you will see a welcome message. Then you can send a get request to http://localhost:8080/engines to get all the information about the engines, you can add query parameters to the previous command, the query parameters compatible are:

• id: to get a specific engine using its id.
• engine: to get a specific engine using its name.

Legal note: scrapping Wikipedia is completely legal.

This project was made to serve as a final project for CS50.