RC Client Exercise

Dependencies

I chose to use Ruby for this project because it is easily installed on all three target OS types and it is well suited for quick prototyping.

The Open3 module was chosen to help with command execution for the process status reporting features.

This project includes five program files to be executed by Ruby. Details about each program file are below.

Execution

Each program is executed individually. An example is provided in the "run.sh" file.

Logging

All programs provided in this project append to a log file at /tmp/rc_client_log.json. If the execution of the program is successful, a serialized log entry will be appended to this file. If the program file does not exit successfully, a message is printed to STDERR.

Each log entry in the file ends with a newline character. Log entries are JSON-formatted strings representing the details of each program's execution.

Program Files

start_process.rb

Usage: ruby start_process.rb EXECUTABLE [ARGUMENTS] ;

Takes two arguments: the executable to be run and an optional string with any arguments to be passed to the executable.

This program executes the specified executable file, with arguments provided.

write_file.rb

Usage example: ruby write_file.rb ORIGIN_FILE_PATH DESTINATION_FILE_PATH;

Takes two arguments: the path of the source file to be copied and the path for the copied file.

This program writes a specified file at a specified location by copying a source file. The example script run.sh copies this Readme file, but any file path can be specified, as long as the file is available to the user executing the program.

modify_file.rb

Usage example: ruby modify_file.rb FILE_PATH;

Takes one argument: the path of the file to be modified.

This program modifies a specified file by appending a string.

delete_file.rb

Usage example: ruby delete_file.rb FILE_PATH;

Takes one argument: the path of the file to be deleted.

This program removes the specified file using the rm executable.

network_transmission.rb

Usage example: ruby network_transmission.rb URL [TOKEN];

Takes two arguments: the URL to receive the data transmission and an optional "token" to identify a specific transaction.

This program uses the curl executable to send a www-url-encoded string as form data with the HTTP verb POST.