Day 4: Game Day Schedule API - ECS, API Gateway, Elastic Load Balancing | DevOpsAllStarsChallenge

System Components

1. Client: Makes requests to the system to fetch game day schedule information.

2. API Gateway: Acts as the entry point for all client requests. It routes requests to the appropriate backend service (in this case, the Flask app).

3. Application Load Balancer (ALB): Distributes incoming traffic between the two containers running the Flask app.

4. Flask App (Containerized):

   • Deployed in two containers for redundancy.

   • Fetches data from an external sports API.

   • Processes the data and responds to client requests.

5. External Sports API: Provides game day schedule data.

6. Amazon ECS (Elastic Container Service): Manages the deployment and scaling of the Flask app containers.

7. Amazon ECR (Elastic Container Registry): Stores the Docker image for the Flask app.

System Workflow

1. Client Request:

   • The client sends a request to the API Gateway (e.g., GET /game-schedule).

2. API Gateway:

   • The API Gateway forwards the request to the Application Load Balancer.

3. Application Load Balancer:

   • The ALB distributes the request to one of the two Flask app containers based on load balancing rules (e.g., round-robin).

4. Flask App:

   • The Flask app receives the request.

   • It makes a call to the external sports API to fetch the required data.

   • Processes the data and sends a response back to the client via the API Gateway.

5. Response:

   • The API Gateway sends the response back to the client.

Prerequisites

Before you start, make sure you have the following:

✅ AWS CLI installed and configured.
✅ Docker installed to build and push the Flask app image.
✅ Python 3.x installed for the Flask application.
✅ SportsData.io API Key to fetch game schedules.

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Step 1: Clone the Project Repository

git clone https://github.com/your-repo/game-day-notifications.git
cd game-day-notifications

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Step 2: Build and Push the Docker Image

# Authenticate Docker with AWS ECR
aws ecr get-login-password --region eu-west-2 | docker login --username AWS --password-stdin <your-ecr-repo-url>

# Build the Flask app image
docker build -t game-day-flask .

# Tag and push the image to Amazon ECR
docker tag game-day-flask:latest <your-ecr-repo-url>/game-day-flask:latest
docker push <your-ecr-repo-url>/game-day-flask:latest

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Step 3: Deploy the Infrastructure Using AWS ECS

1. Create an ECS Cluster

    aws ecs create-cluster --cluster-name GameDayCluster
   

2. Register the Task Definition (Replace placeholders with actual values)

    {
        "family": "game-day-task",
        "containerDefinitions": [
            {
                "name": "game-day-container",
                "image": "<your-ecr-repo-url>/game-day-flask:latest",
                "memory": 512,
                "cpu": 256,
                "essential": true,
                "portMappings": [
                    {
                        "containerPort": 5000,
                        "hostPort": 5000
                    }
                ]
            }
        ]
    }
   

   Save this as task-definition.json and run:

    aws ecs register-task-definition --cli-input-json file://task-definition.json
   

3. Create an ECS Service

    aws ecs create-service --cluster GameDayCluster \
        --service-name game-day-service \
        --task-definition game-day-task \
        --desired-count 2 \
        --launch-type FARGATE \
        --network-configuration "awsvpcConfiguration={subnets=[subnet-12345],securityGroups=[sg-12345],assignPublicIp=ENABLED}"
   

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Step 4: Configure API Gateway and ALB

1. Create an ALB

    aws elbv2 create-load-balancer --name GameDayALB --subnets subnet-12345 subnet-67890
   

2. Create a Target Group and Register Containers

    aws elbv2 create-target-group --name game-day-target-group \
        --protocol HTTP --port 5000 --vpc-id vpc-12345 \
        --target-type ip
   

3. Create API Gateway Integration

   • Go to AWS API Gateway.

   • Create a new API and set up a proxy integration to forward requests to the ALB.

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Step 5: Test the Setup

Once deployed, send a request to your API Gateway:

curl -X GET "https://your-api-gateway-url/game-schedule"

If everything is set up correctly, you'll receive game schedule data from the external API.

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Conclusion

In this guide, we built a Game Day Notifications System using AWS services such as ECS, API Gateway, ALB, and ECR, along with a containerized Flask application to fetch and process sports data.

Next Steps

🚀 Enhance Notifications – Integrate AWS SNS or SES for real-time notifications.
📊 Data Analytics – Store data in S3 and analyze with AWS Athena.
🔄 Automate Deployments – Use Terraform or CloudFormation for IaC.

Got questions? Drop a comment or check out the GitHub repo. 🚀