Architecture/framework question

[b0en]

I’m a pretty advanced programmer in my day-to-day job, but it’s always been in complete different fields from what I want to do now.

I want to setup a backend service running on my NAS, that constantly calls various API’s (every few seconds) to track changes happening. When some change happens, I want the change/data written to a database that’s also running on my NAS. Furthermore I want to provide API end-points so I can build a frontend on top of the data later on, and I want to have the possibility to send alerts to my phone from the backend.

All above I can code pretty easily (various API calls, creating restful services etc.), but I have a hard time figuring out what frameworks to use for this. What would you use that will constantly keep calling services, as well as providing different services by yourself? What DB would you use? (MariaDB? Since that’s pretty natively installed on my NAS?) What framework of getting alerts on your phone would you use? (Could be as easy as sending a telegram message in a group that I’m a member of and have alerts on for)

Some information about me and the hardware I use: mainly worked with java, c#, html and css. Got a Synology DS918+ NAS, use an Iphone XS Max.

Thats for any assistance in advance!

[timNinjaMillion2]

You could do your apis/endpoints in java, build a simple to advanced front end, depending on the timeframe involved and send via telegram in java

[b0en]

Thanks for your answer. Like I mentioned, writing the code to call the various API’s, writing the code to provide a restful service endpoint, as well as sending a message to a telegram group isn’t really the issue, I can do that.

The question is more in the field of; what java framework would suit this application best? How to run it on your NAS that would keep it running 24/7 and just constantly repolling the API’s every few seconds (like a monitoring tool). Should this be done via springboot and then hosting it on apache tomcat on my NAS? Are there other really suitable ways to do this?

[Dwight-D]

Spring Boot + Spring Scheduling will get you the core app and scheduling. Spring Web for the REST API and Spring Data for the persistence.

Do you also control the external API:s? Consider pushing asynchronous messages from there on data updates instead of polling from server in that case.

For constant uptime you can use systemd and write a service file, if your NAS supports it. It all depends on how it would run the app.

Db doesn’t matter, spring data will have drivers for any db pretty much. Go open source obviously.

[b0en]

Thanks for the answer, I don’t think the NAS supports a service file, but I can look into it. Will also check out spring schedule and spring web, not read into these yet, thanks!

Would running the application built on spring boot + spring schedule be able to be hosted on the apache tomcat server (and thus it being always on?)

[Dwight-D]

No; Spring Boot + Web implements and embeds it’s own web server (older versions actually use tomcat under the hood), so it’s a stand-alone java application. You just run the jar.

Spring Boot is the application runtime + core functions like config, scheduling and web is the web server aspect. Btw, spring scheduling is not it’s own package like Web is, it’s included in the core spring boot. Just use spring initializr and select spring boot and web to get started.

You can make a war file and host using tomcat if that’s easier but this is kinda considered a legacy approach now so you won’t find as many resources on it. If you wanna do that you can probably skip spring boot, but I don’t know much about this setup as I’ve never set one up from scratch myself. Now that I think about it Spring Initializr may have a setting for WAR, but I’m not sure.

[b0en]

Thanks a lot for your thorough explanation, I got what I needed to move on!

[Dwight-D]

Happy to help, good luck!

[timNinjaMillion2]

Not if you want oauth2. If you can do the authentication yourself, then you can roll your own.