Sila Technologies Product Server

Demo for Sila by Montana Gau done using ASP.NET and MongoDb. Note: I have opted to separate the parts from the assemblies completely as that organization made more sense to me. There is no adding "parts" to each other as requested. Instead, an assembly must be created first and then parts can be added to that assembly. This seemed a more logical structure in my opinion. Changing this however, would be reasonably easy by automatically creating a parent assembly when adding parts together. Additionally, a real database has been added and state is preserved throughout restarts. Much of the code used here (particularly around DB interaction) is borrowed from my website, https://yabberon.com (still WIP please ignore the embarrassing test content) which is already running ASP.NET in the backend.

Getting started

Starting the database

Pull the mongo docker container from the docker hub by running the following:

docker pull mongo

Start the docker container in the background by running the following: (Omit the -d flag to run in the foreground)

docker run -d --name Sila -p 12345:27017 mongo

Running the ASP.NET Server

First, ensure that you have .Net 5 installed. Then, from the command line, run dotnet run from the root of the repo. This will run the server in development mode which should be sufficient for our purposes. I have excluded the appsettings.Development.json file from the .gitignore to make for easier configuration.

Interacting with the web server

NOTE: Both the server and database must be running in order to run any commands in this section.

Creating a part

curl -v -X POST localhost:5000/api/part -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '
{
    "Name": "Barrel Bottom"
}'

Additionally, we can optionally add parameters for Material and Color shown as follows:

curl -v -X POST localhost:5000/api/part -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '
{
    "Name": "Barrel Bottom",
    "Color": "Red",
    "Material": "Plastic"
}'

Getting a part

curl -v -X GET localhost:5000/api/part/<PART_ID>

Get all parts by running

curl -v -X GET localhost:5000/api/part

Creating an assembly

curl -v -X POST localhost:5000/api/assembly -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '
{
    "Name": "Barrel Assembly"
}'

Getting an assembly

curl -v -X GET localhost:5000/api/assembly/<ASSEMBLY_ID>

Get all assemblies by running

curl -v -X GET localhost:5000/api/assembly

Add an item to an assembly

Add a part to the assembly by running:

curl -v -X PUT localhost:5000/api/part/<ID_OF_CHILD_PART> -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '
{
    "ParentAssemblyId": "<ID_OF_PARENT_ASSEMBLY>"
}'

Add an assembly to another assembly by running:

curl -v -X PUT localhost:5000/api/assembly/<ID_OF_CHILD_ASSEMBLY> -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '
{
    "ParentAssemblyId": "<ID_OF_PARENT_ASSEMBLY>"
}'

Remove an item from an assembly by running either of the above, but with the value of ParentAssemblyId set to null.

Delete a part or assembly

Delete a part by running:

curl -v -X DELETE localhost:5000/api/part/<ID_OF_ASSEMBLY>

Delete an assembly by running:

curl -v -X DELETE localhost:5000/api/assembly/<ID_OF_ASSEMBLY>

List all top-level assemblies

curl -v -X GET localhost:5000/api/assembly?topLevelOnly=true

Pen Demo

All 4 examples follow the same process:

1. Create the basic component parts
2. Organize these component parts into sub-assemblies
3. Combine the sub-assemblies to form the top-level assembly

For concise I have only included one example. The other three examples follow the same process and only need to change the color and material in the curl requests. I have not included a script to do this for you in order to save time for myself.

Create a red metal pen:

# Create parts for barrel assembly
curl -X POST localhost:5000/api/part -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '
{
    "Name": "Barrel Bottom",
    "Color": "Red",
    "Material": "Metal"
}';
curl -X POST localhost:5000/api/part -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '
{
    "Name": "Barrel Top",
    "Color": "Red",
    "Material": "Metal"
}';
curl -X POST localhost:5000/api/part -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '
{
    "Name": "Pocket Clip"
}';
curl -X POST localhost:5000/api/part -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '
{
    "Name": "Thruster"
}';
curl -X POST localhost:5000/api/part -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '
{
    "Name": "Cam"
}';
curl -X POST localhost:5000/api/part -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '
{
    "Name": "Grip",
    "Color": "Black",
    "Material": "Rubber"
}';
curl -X POST localhost:5000/api/part -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '
{
    "Name": "Spring"
}';
# Create parts for cartridge assembly
curl -X POST localhost:5000/api/part -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '
{
    "Name": "Cartridge body"
}';
curl -X POST localhost:5000/api/part -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '
{
    "Name": "Cartridge cap"
}';
curl -X POST localhost:5000/api/part -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '
{
    "Name": "Writing tip"
}';
curl -X POST localhost:5000/api/part -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '
{
    "Name": "Ink",
    "Color": "Red"
}';
# Create parts for the pen box
curl -X POST localhost:5000/api/part -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '
{
    "Name": "Box top"
}';
curl -X POST localhost:5000/api/part -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '
{
    "Name": "Box bottom"
}';
curl -X POST localhost:5000/api/part -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '
{
    "Name": "Box insert"
}';

# Create a barrel assembly (from the barrel parts above)
curl -v -X POST localhost:5000/api/assembly -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '
{
    "Name": "Barrel Assembly"
}'
# Create a cartridge assembly (from the cartridge parts above)
curl -v -X POST localhost:5000/api/assembly -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '
{
    "Name": "Cartridge assembly"
}'
# Create a pen assembly (from the previous two assemblies)
curl -v -X POST localhost:5000/api/assembly -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '
{
    "Name": "Pen assembly"
}'
# Create a completed pen assembly (from the assemblies above)
curl -v -X POST localhost:5000/api/assembly -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '
{
    "Name": "Completed pen assembly"
}'

# Add the assembly parts to each corresponding assembly by running the following for each part
curl -v -X PUT localhost:5000/api/part/<ID_OF_CHILD_PART> -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '
{
    "ParentAssemblyId": "<ID_OF_PARENT_ASSEMBLY>"
}'

Future Improvements

1. Authentication

2. Unit Tests

3. Logging

4. Optimize Db Schema for most typical use cases

5. Depending on the application of the server, it may be better to implement a specific class for each individual part. The implementation is entirely agnostic to pens in particular; it can be applied to any BOM. This is great for flexibility, but at the cost of robustness and validation. Perhaps only some assembly combinations are valid, which this approach has no protection for. Again, this pros/ons spectrum entirely depends on application. If tomorrow it were requested that this server be able to support, say, a BOM for 1000+ parts, then this approach is certainly preferable. If this is a website for a custom pen shop then this approach would not be the most suitable.