6.470 Hackathon Front-End

This repository contains the Rails application used to run 6.470 hackathons.

Grading Endpoints

The 6.470 hackathon software is broken up into a Web front-end that keeps track of users, submissions and scores, and one or many grading endpoints that implement the problem-specific grading code. The endpoints are stateless.

The front-end talks to the endpoints using a HTTP-based protocol. Each submission is sent to a grading endpoint via a POST request with the following parameters:

• task is a problem name, such as js-console; endpoints have complete control over the problem names, and the front-end admin UI allows the hackathon staff to set up the names sent to the endpoints
• code is the contestant-submitted code

The grading endpoint returns a HTTP response with the following headers.

• X-Grader-Score is an integer between 0 and the maximum possible score
• X-Grader-Maxscore is an integer indicating the maximum score that the endpoint awards for this problem set; this doesn't need to be the same as the user-visible score
• X-Grader-Verdict is a brief (one-line) explanation of the score

The body of the grader's HTTP response is saved and made available to the contestants. The response should help contestants understand the verdict, and should be a static HTML page with no external references (use inline CSS styles, data: image URLs, etc.) and no JavaScript.

The following extensions might be implemented in future protocol versions.

• X-Grader-Warning flagging submissions that seem to break into the grading system, and should be reviewed
• A GET request for obtaining the list of problems implemented by a grading endpoint, as well as the problem text in Markdown

Development

First, follow the installation instructions for the sample grading endpoint. The endpoint shares many requirements with the front-end. The endpoint should be running during the setup process.

Get the code and its required libraries.

git checkout git@github.com:csail/mit6470-hackathon.git
cd mit6470-hackathon
bundle install

Set up the development database.

bundle exec rake db:create db:migrate db:seed

Start a development server at http://localhost:10000.

bundle exec foreman start

Production

The initial setup is similar to the development setup.

git checkout git@github.com:csail/mit6470-hackathon.git
cd mit6470-hackathon
bundle install
RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rake db:create db:migrate

The application should be set up as a system daemon.

sudo foreman export systemd /etc/systemd/system --procfile=Procfile.prod --env=config/production.env --user=$USER --port=12300
sudo foreman export upstart /etc/init --procfile=Procfile.prod --env=config/production.env --user=$USER --port=12300