CS453 Take-Home Final Starter

This repository supplies the local infrastructure for Parts 3–5 of the CS453 take-home final. It is deliberately incomplete: implement only the clearly marked exam TODOs. It uses a local SQLite file and an in-process educational queue, so it needs no PostgreSQL, Redis, Docker, or external service.

Requirements and setup

Use Node.js 20 or later.

npm install
cp .env.example .env
npm run db:init
npm run tokens
npm start

npm run tokens prints short-lived development JWTs only. It does not implement OAuth or a production login system. Start the server in watch mode with npm run dev.

Use a token in a request with this header syntax (replace the placeholder locally):

Authorization: Bearer <token>

For example, a request can be sent with curl -H "Authorization: Bearer <token>" http://localhost:3000/tasks. The authentication and authorization behavior is part of the exam and is intentionally unfinished.

File map

Exam part	Files
Part 3: JWT authentication and roles	src/middleware/auth.js, src/routes/tasks.js
Part 4: task lookup and ownership	src/routes/tasks.js, src/database.js
Part 5: report workflow	src/routes/reports.js, src/workers/reportWorker.js, src/reportQueue.js, src/reportGenerator.js

Student TODO checklist

• TODO(PART 3): implement JWT authentication, role authorization, and apply the required middleware to task routes.
• TODO(PART 4): implement the parameterized task lookup, 404 behavior, instructor access, and student ownership check.
• TODO(PART 5): create and enqueue report jobs, return 202 Accepted, and complete the worker status workflow.

Search for TODO(PART to find every graded location. The queue, database schema, report generator, and general error handling are supplied infrastructure, not exam work.

Notes

The in-process queue is a small educational stand-in for RabbitMQ, Redis/BullMQ, SQS, or Kafka. It is FIFO within this process but not durable; messages disappear if the process stops.

Queue configuration, OAuth implementation, HTTPS certificate creation, and database schema creation are not student responsibilities. The starter uses HTTP locally; any production HTTPS/OpenAPI documentation belongs in the exam response as directed.

Do not commit .env, generated database files under data/, printed tokens, node_modules, or coverage output. Run the supplied infrastructure tests with npm test.