Add Web-based Functionality to sloop.mit.edu

Sloop is an animal biometrics search engine. It consists of a web server, a database, an and image processing engine. The web server uses Node.js with Express. The main web application is a client-side Javascript app in the Angular.js framework, using Bootstrap CSS. The server provides a RESTful API that the client uses to communicate with the database. The app takes full advantage of HTML5 and is designed to work well on both desktops and mobile devices. Both the web server and the client-side app are 100% Javascript (no Flash, Java, Apache, or ASP). The database is PostgreSQL. For ACID compliance, all data relevant to a Sloop instance (including images) is stored in the database. This allows the web server to be entirely agnostic of which species or specific Sloop instance the database provides. For maximum performance, Sloop makes extensive use of Postgres triggers and internal functions. There is a Perl script to initialize (drop and recreate) the database. Sloop is packaged as a headless Linux virtual machine to enable users to spin up new instances very quickly. Because Node.js and Angular.js are new technologies, there is no IDE designed for it. So while one could use an IDE to modify the code files, all management must be done on the command line, over SSH. Candidate should have experience with or interest in: - Functional web design - RESTful APIs - Javascript, and debugging it in the browser - Node.js, Angular.js, and MVC programming - Mobile development - Authentication, authorization, and OAuth - Relational databases and schema design - PostgreSQL triggers and rules - Familiarity with Github and git - Working over SSH and comfort with command line tools - Running Linux or FreeBSD in a virtual machine - Familiarity with regression or unit testing is a plus ----------------------------------- And the updated list of tasks: - Let a USER capture their view of ranked retrievals for an ADMIN to review. - Create regression testing suite with cucumber/nodeunit. - Allow user to swap the current query image for others without reloading the page. - Enable the use of a remote database to allow the webserver and database to be on separate machines. - Add configuration option for expiring handouts after a set amount of time. - Expire user auth tokens after a period of time. - Maintain a log of every event where a USER or ADMIN modified the state of an image. - Interface with Mechanical Turk. - Add running graphics of system produced identities and performance.