A Small Dice API

Dice for fun, laughs, and trying out API stuff!

Inspiration 💡

This idea was loosely inspired by Steve Brazier's PHP-powered DiceAPI project 🎲

I also took this as a chance to try and play around with fastapi 🏎️

Development 🏗️

Routes 🗺️

First, I added a main route which returns sample dice data:

/

The response also included an example on how to call different sets of dice, valid dice values, and a link to some documentation (more on that later below 😉):

{
  "dice_set": [
    {
      "id": 0,
      "dice": "d6",
      "value": 3
    }
  ],
  "links": [
    {
      "name": "dice",
      "href": "/dice",
      "query_params": [
        "dice"
      ],
      "valid_values": [
        "d4",
        "d6",
        "d8",
        "d10",
        "d12",
        "d20"
      ],
      "example": "/dice/?dice=d4,d6,d8",
      "type": "GET"
    },
    {
      "name": "documentation",
      "href": "/docs",
      "type": "GET"
    }
  ]
}

Afterwards, I also added a dice route with a dice parameter, which accepts different valid dice as parameters, separated by commas:

/dice/?dice=d4,d6,d6

The application would return a dice_set object, which would return the id, dice, and value of the corresponding dice!

{
  "dice_set": [
    {
      "id": 0,
      "dice": "d4",
      "value": 3
    },
    {
      "id": 1,
      "dice": "d6",
      "value": 5
    },
    {
      "id": 2,
      "dice": "d6",
      "value": 1
    }
  ]
}

I was also wondering whether there was an automated way to show a list of available routes and try them out. In this case, I learned that it is possible and I specified a link to the auto-generated "docs":

/docs

Tests 📝

I also wanted to try out the testing functionality of fastapi by writing a few tests.

Should I add more features, the tests would help me check whether things are still working smoothly later on (and squash possible bugs) 🤞

Documentation 📖

Using the docs/ route from earlier, the application has a means for showing the available routes and a mini playground to try some dice 🧪

Formatting ✨

Flake8 and Black keep the application's code a bit tidier. I also included a workflow to run flake8, black, and pytest on the repository 🧹

Some Fun 🎲

With a dice API ready, it was handy for our dice-rolling needs 😆 Definitely more features could be considered and added. Though for now, I just want to roll some dice 🎲

Some to-dos include finding a simple way to deploy a "live" demo, a user interface for the application, and further play around with fastapi. As for tackling them, stay tuned to my blog for new posts and updates 🍷