Controversies of Science API / Backend

This is the new backend db and controller for the Controversies of Science API. The former backend was built on top of Apigee's Usergrid NoSQL. Through those experiences, I have decided to transition this project to a more production-ready database technology. Fortunately, there are a number of similarities between Usergrid and MongoDB.

This repo of course assumes that have mongodb set up and running on your local machine. If you don't, consider using homebrew:

brew install mongodb

Controversy Card Data

The controversy card data required to test the Halton Arp controversy prototype at https://github.com/worldviewer/react-worldviewer-prototype will soon be hardcoded into the scrape script. No further action is currently required to set up the backend.

Controversy Card Metadata

That said, this will not always be the case. As the prototype builds out, we'll need access to more than just information about the Halton Arp controversy card. That means grabbing the metadata for all of the current controversy cards in the Controversies of Science collection.

If the scrape script detects that the Google+ API key environment variables are set, it will populate the mongodb database controversy card metadata from the G+ API.

Access to the G+ API requires an API key from Google. For more information on how to do that, go here:

https://developers.google.com/+/web/api/rest/oauth

The scrape script assumes that you have two environmental key variables set, and will only perform the G+ scrape if valid values are provided for these two keys:

export GPLUS_USER_ID='<a long number>'
export GPLUS_API_KEY='<a long alphanumeric string>'

These would be set in a file like .profile or .bash_profile in your root (if you are using a Linux-based machine).

Either way -- with or without metadata -- to set up and populate the Mongodb database, run:

npm run build
npm run scrape

This will set up the backend with enough data to use the React frontend at https://github.com/worldviewer/react-worldviewer-prototype.

The MongoDB / AWS Lambda Backend MicroServices

I will be using AWS Lambda Node deployments for the time being to serve controversy card data, the image pyramid and the image assets. This is being migrated from a former Usergrid implementation.

Controversy Card /metadata Endpoint

https://y3uwecnnmb.execute-api.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/dev/metacards

This repository is at https://github.com/worldviewer/aws-lambda-mongo-metacards-api.

Controversy /card/{id} Endpoint

https://czlxg9sj34.execute-api.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/dev/cards/58b8f1f7b2ef4ddae2fb8b17

This repository is at https://github.com/worldviewer/aws-lambda-mongo-cards-api.

Making the Image Pyramid and Overlay Assets Publicly Available on AWS S3

This is best done with the Cyberduck software (which only requires the two AWS keys to log in) -- because Cyberduck simplifies the process of uploading large batches of files.

To make the files publicly accessible, it's necessary to set the bucket policy:

{
    "Version": "2008-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "AllowPublicRead",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Principal": {
                "AWS": "*"
            },
            "Action": "s3:GetObject",
            "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::controversy-cards-assets/*"
        }
    ]
}

To get the image pyramid files ...

https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/controversy-cards-assets/58b8f1f7b2ef4ddae2fb8b17/pyramid_files

To get the other assets, the base URL will be ...

https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/controversy-cards-assets/58b8f1f7b2ef4ddae2fb8b17/assets

Data Source

The cards are broken down into 6 categories:

• ongoing - Recent, ongoing controversies
• historical - Controversies possibly still at play, but more historical in nature
• person - Some people you should know about + character studies
• reform - Relevant to academic reform and redesigning scientific discourse
• critique - The best critical commentary ever published for modern science
• thinking - How to think like a scientist about controversies

The data is scraped from my Google Plus collection, here:

Controversies of Science - https://plus.google.com/collection/Yhn4Y