Managing tasks¶

Several routes available on the API can be used to manage Pythia tasks. For example, it is possible to retrieve a list with all the available tasks, to get detailed information about a task or even to create a new one.

Task¶

The core service provided by Pythia is to execute tasks. Roughly speaking, it amounts at executing code in a given execution environment. In particular, a task contains a sequence of commands to be executed, each of which corresponding to code that can be executed in the execution environment. The following metadata are associated to every task:

A unique identifier for the Pythia backbone to uniquely identify the task.
A friendly name for the task that can be shown to the end user.
The list of authors who contributed to the creation of the task.
A detailed description of the task.
The environment in which the task is executed.
The constraints of the virtual machine in which the task is executed: time, memory, disk and output size.

Example of a task

{
  "taskid": "hello-world",
  "name": "Hello World (Shell)",
  "authors": ["John Doe"],
  "description": "This task prints 'Hello World!' to the standard output.",
  "environment": "busybox",
  "limits": {
    "time": 60,
    "memory": 32,
    "disk": 50,
    "output": 1024
  }
}

Details¶

The following table summarises the operations available on tasks.

Resource	Operation	Description
Task	GET /tasks/(string: taskid)	Get task.
	POST /tasks	Create task.
Tasks collection	GET /tasks	Get collection of tasks.

Get task¶

The following route can be used to get a list of all the tasks that are available on the Pythia backbone to be executed. It returns an array with each existing task described by its unique identifier, its name and list of authors. If no tasks are available, it returns an empty array.

GET /api/tasks¶

The tasks available on the Pythia backbone.

Example request

GET /api/tasks HTTP/1.1
Host: example.com
Accept: application/json

Example response

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json

[
  {
    "taskid": "hello-world",
    "name": "Hello World (Shell)",
    "authors": ["John Doe"],
  },
  {
    "taskid": "execute-python",
    "name": "Python executor (Python 3.5.3)",
    "authors": ["John Doe", "Jane Doe"],
  }
]

Request Headers:
	Accept – application/json
Response Headers:
	Content-Type – application/json
Response JSON Array of Objects:
	taskid (string) – the unique identifier of the task name (string) – the friendly name of the task authors (string[]) – the list of authors of the task
Status Codes:	200 OK – no error

Create task¶

The following route can be used to create a new task on the Pythia backbone. It provides a way to create a new task in a “raw way”, directly providing the code to be executed in the task. It also makes it possible to create a task following one of the existing task templates, given a configuration.

POST /api/tasks¶

Creates a new task.

Example request

POST /api/tasks HTTP/1.1
Host: example.com
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "taskid": "hello-go",
  "environment": "go1.12",
  "type": "raw",
  "config": {
    "taskfs": "..."
  }
}

Example response

HTTP/1.1 200 OK

Request Headers:
	Content-Type – application/json
Request JSON Object:
	taskid (string) – the identifier of the task environment (string) – the environment in which to execute the task type (string) – the type of the task limits (object) – the constraints of the virtual machine in which to execute the task: time, memory, disk and output size (optional, default: `{"time": 60, "memory": 32, "disk": 50, "output": 1024}`) config (string) – the configuration of the task (optional)
Status Codes:	200 OK – no error

Get all tasks¶

The following route can be used to get the detailed information about a single task given its unique identifier. All the fields described in the beginning of this page are returned if it exists on the Pythia backbone, and an error is raised otherwise.

GET /api/tasks/(string: taskid)¶

The task with the unique identifier (taskid).

Example request

GET /api/tasks/hello-world HTTP/1.1
Host: example.com
Accept: application/json

Example response

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "taskid": "hello-world",
  "name": "Hello World (Shell)",
  "authors": ["John Doe"],
  "description": "This task prints 'Hello World!' to the standard output.",
  "environment": "busybox",
  "limits": {
    "time": 60,
    "memory": 32,
    "disk": 50,
    "output": 1024
  }
}

Request Headers:
	Accept – application/json
Response Headers:
	Content-Type – application/json
Response JSON Object:
	taskid (string) – the unique identifier of the task (taskid) name (string) – the friendly name of the task authors (string[]) – the list of authors of the task description (string) – the description of the task environment (string) – the environment in which to execute the task limits (object) – the constraints of the virtual machine in which the task is executed: time, memory, disk and output size
Status Codes:	200 OK – no error 404 Not Found – no task with the specified (taskid) has been found on the Pythia backbone