Project for July meeting

[Rick Hall]

For July, we have discussed doing a web services project.  I would like to see us write a restful service and post it to heroku.

Ideally, it would be something we would want to consume later, when we use noir or cljs in future meetups.

Anyone have any thoughts on what they would like to build?

[bagel]

I suggest a RESTful hold 'em poker service.

Pros:
- well-known and limited domain (quick start, quick finish)
- poker objects and events map easily to clojure objects and http verbs
- allows separate back-end and front-end development
- provides a useful example for others
- provides a useful service for others

Cons:
- trite

The ultimate goal would be a full implementation of a free poker restful service, complete with an example web client, simple installation, and my favorite: the use of bitcoin to play.

What do you all think?

bagel

[Rick Hall]

A poker game does sound like a fun project.  I am not sure that REST would be the way to go for that though.  I think it would better fit a more RPC type architecture. 

REST is usually used for long lived resources and client driven communication. 

A poker game is short lived.  Each client needs to be updated, with some sort of a server push every time a change is made by any client participating in the game.  It may be possible to do a restful poker game, but I don't think it is an ideal case for REST. 

That said, it does sound like a fun project. 
Someone from the London group wrote a blog post on how to run a code dojo: http://otfrom.wordpress.com/2012/07/04/how-to-run-a-london-clojure-dojo-in-20ish-easy-steps/  They say to start a list of suggested projects with 1. Roman Numeral Calculator.  I think Texas Hold 'Em will be second on our list.  Anyone have a third suggestion?

Rick