urls_to_zip

A simple Python http microservice created with the FastAPI framework that loads a JSON data structure and responds with a .zip file whose contents are each of the source url named as filename within the final .zip archive.

Sample data below:

[
  {
    "url": "https://media.giphy.com/media/3oz8xD0xvAJ5FCk7Di/giphy.gif",
    "filename": "pic001.gif"
  },
  {
    "url": "https://media.giphy.com/media/l3vRfhFD8hJCiP0uQ/giphy.gif",
    "filename": "pic002.gif"
  },
  ...
]

To Run:

Note: Written in Python 3.9.0

• Clone the repo and change into the project directory:

git clone git@github.com:HarryLinux/urls_to_zip.git
cd urls_to_zip

• Create and activate your virtual environment:

python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate

• Install the requirements:

pip3 install -r requirements.txt

• Start the service:

uvicorn main:app

The server should now be running on localhost:8000 (http://127.0.0.1:8000)

Endpoints

The service exposes two endpoints, not including the auto-generated docs (Thanks FastAPI)

• POST /get-zip
  • Request body should contain a list of JSON objects like the one shown above
  • Given the data in the request body is valid, it will return a JSON response with status code 202 as shown below

{
  "message": "Zip file processing, send GET request to /get-zip/<zip_id>",
  "id": <zip_id>
}

FastAPI provides a data validation system that can detect any invalid data type at the runtime
and returns the reason for bad inputs to the user in the JSON format.

• GET /get-zip/{zip_id}
  • Request should contain the zip_id returned from the POST request
  • If the zipping process has completed, the FileResponse object provided by FastAPI will asynchronously stream the file as the response.
  • Else, you'll receive the appropriate JSON response with either status code 202 or 404 depending on whether zip_id was valid and the process is pending, or the zip_id was invalid, respectively.

Testing

To test the service you could use a client like Insomnia or Postman using the enpoints and protocols mentioned earlier, passing in the appropriate parameters.

or

Using the CLI, you could send curl commands like shown below:

curl -X POST http://localhost:8000/get-zip -d '[{"url": "https://media.giphy.com/media/3oz8xD0xvAJ5FCk7Di/giphy.gif", "filename": "pic001.gif"}, {"url": "https://media.giphy.com/media/l3vRfhFD8hJCiP0uQ/giphy.gif", "filename": "pic002.gif"}]'

curl [-X GET] http://localhost:8000/get-zip/<zip_id> -o <output_file>.zip

Why FastAPI?

This is a framework I've wanted to try out for a while now after reading about it, but this article does a great job highlighting the benefits and reasoning as to why FastAPI is a great choice over the more common Flask framework, or others for that matter.