Gnocchi Research: Week 10

At the end of Week 9, I found that the Mongoose library (in C) was too difficult for me to work with. As a result, I searched for alternatives. Python-as a language-seemed like a good choice. This was because it had high level operations. Furthermore, Python had better documented APIs than C.

Olga suggested I run with Flask or Cherrypy. Both seemed quite similar and fulfilled the same purpose- providing the API for a web server.

Choosing the Flask API, I started implementing several server-side operations at a functional level. I used the server's file system to do storage.

• PUBLISHER_REGISTER and SUBSCRIBER REGISTER
• A POST that registers the publisher/subscriber by storing their public key. 
• CREDENTIAL_QUERY
• A GET operation that tells a publisher/subscriber information about a target entity. 
• ADD_MEMBER
• A POST that allows publishers to add subscribers. 
• JOIN_GROUP
• A POST that lets subscribers request to join a group
• RETRIEVE_MEMBERSHIP_REQUESTS
• Publishers GET membership requests from the previous JOIN_GROUP for a particular group
• SUBSCRIBER_UNREGISTER
• Deletes a subscriber from all of its groups, freeing up space in the server
• DELETE_MEMBER
• Publisher POST that removes a member from a group
• New encrypted group keys must be uploaded eventually via UPDATE_GROUP_KEY
• GET_GROUP_KEY
• Subscriber GET request that retrieves his/her encrypted group key for a particular group
• RETRIEVE_MEMBERSHIP
• Publisher GET command that retrieves the members of a group he/she created
• UPDATE_GROUP_KEY
• Follow-up to DELETE_MEMBER
• Publisher POST that uploads new encrypted group keys to everyone who wasn't deleted
• CREATE_GROUP
• A GET request by publishers to get a unique Group ID for the keyserver.
• Also registers that group for the publisher
• SUBSCRIBER_GROUP_LIST
• GET request by subscribers that shows what groups he/she is a part of
• PUBLISHER_GROUP_LIST
• GET request by subscribers that shows what groups a certain publisher is in charge of

All of these are done on some level aside from UPDATE_GROUP_KEY: That function probably needs some thought first. Perhaps we should use a special file structure that contains users and encrypted keys, which could be parsed by the file server

Additionally, verification will have to be implemented: We don't want the key server to allow a non-creator publisher to delete members of a group :)