Splits.io

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A speedrun data store, analysis engine, and racing platform.

About

Splits.io is how speedrunners improve through data. It gives split-by-split analysis of individual runs, viewed through a lens of all runs. On Splits.io, speedrunners share more than their time—they share their entire history of attempts, successful or not, and get feedback on how to improve long-term through statistics and comparisons with themselves and other runners in their weight class, both live (via races) and after-the-fact using historical data.

Splits.io works with LiveSplit and more than 15 other speedrunning timers. An auto-generated list can be viewed in the FAQ; new timers can self-integrate using the Splits.io Exchange Format.

API

Client libraries exist for the following languages. These are created and maintained by community members:

• Python: jeremander/splitsio
• Rust: livesplit/splits-io-api

For full API documentation and when using other languages, see the API readme.

Local Development

Splits.io runs on Docker, which makes it easy and consistent to set up and run on any machine despite any unusual dependencies. The one downside is that you must first install Docker!

Requirements

• Docker
• Docker Compose (on macOS and Windows, this is included in the Docker install)

Special note for Windows

Because of how Splits.io uses Docker, Windows requires WSL2 to be installed to run Splits.io. If you haven't done so already, follow these instructions when running Splits.io on Windows:

1. Install Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) on Windows 10
2. Docker Desktop WSL 2 backend

These steps are not required for Linux or macOS.

Running

First run

The first time you run Splits.io will take a while to build, so you should go grab a coffee or something:

make  # shorthand for make build run

Once the output looks settled (you should see * Listening on tcp://0.0.0.0:3000), open another terminal window and type

make seed

This is required, as it sets up a client ID/secret for your local JavaScript to communicate with your local backend. It will also prepopulate your local database with some initial data.

After that, you're good to go! Access localhost:3000 in your browser. The first page load after a new build may also take a minute.

Note: If the page has no styling information on first run, try rebooting the server.

Subsequent runs

If you have already run make or make build in the past, you usually won't need to rebuild everything again, so you can instead just run the faster version:

make run

If you do need to rebuild (e.g. when adding or upgrading a dependency) but don't necessarily want a server:

make build

Further Setup

These steps are not required for normal operation, but you may want to perform them for specific categories of work.

OAuth

Some features are built on top of links with other platforms, like Twitch sign-in. If you want these features to work, you need to register developer applications with the appropriate services. Copy .envrc.example to .envrc and follow the comments inside for details and instructions for various platforms.

After following the instructions, run

source .envrc
make build run

to rebuild the server with your new environment variables. We recommend using direnv to automate the first step whenever you change directories!

Emails

Splits.io sends emails when users go through the "I forgot my password" flow. In development mode, these emails are not actually sent but are instead generated then saved to tmp/mails.

If you want to preview a demo email in your browser, you can fiddle with the previewers in spec/mailers/previews then access a URL like

http://localhost:3000/rails/mailers/:mailer/:action

such as

http://localhost:3000/rails/mailers/password_reset_token_mailer/create_email.

Debugging

Getting Up and Running

If you're having trouble getting Splits.io running at all using the above instructions, please make a GitHub issue so we can work it out! Even if you think it's a silly issue, the fact that it's happening to you means we haven't ironed out everything (even if the only thing preventing you from setting up is better documentation!).

Working with the Code

If you have the app up and running but are looking for insight into debugging your own changes, you can access a Rails console inside the Docker container with

make console

Attaching to a debugger

If you use binding.pry anywhere in the code, once you hit the breakpoint specified use the command

make attach

in another terminal window to attach to it. To detach, make sure to exit the debug session then use the docker attach escape sequence ctrl + p then ctrl + q.

If you need to attach to a container other than web, specify a container with the syntax

make attach container=worker

Running Tests

To run tests from inside the Docker container, use

make test

To run only specific tests, use

make test path=spec/path/to/test/file/or/dir

Linting

We use Rubocop for code cleanliness and styling. To run it against changed files, commit your changes and run

make lint

Profiling

Splits.io utilizes a few libraries for profiling our code.

Rack Mini Profiler is used to find major slowdowns in the code through the use of the badge in the top left corner of the browser window. There is also a slew of different URL parameters that you can use to get more detailed information about various aspects of the request. Details of these are explained in the readme for RMP. To get more detailed information about how code will perform in a production like environment, run

make profile

to boot the app in the profiling environment, which has most of the production flags toggled on.

DerailedBenchmarks is used to test memory over lots of requests. The commands that can be run are detailed in the readme for DB. When you have a command you want to run, use the make task like so with the options that you need

make derailed env="-e TEST_COUNT=5000 -e USE_AUTH=true" command="exec perf:mem_over_time"

The env flag is optional, so feel free to leave that blank if you have no environment variables to set.

Updating Gems or Docker

If you change the Dockerfile or Gemfile, you'll need to run

make build

to rebuild the Docker image for your changes to apply.

Cleaning Up

If you want to reset from scratch, you can run

make clean

which will run docker-compose down, remove the bundler volume, and remove node_modules/.

Things You Probably Don't Need to Know

Infrastructure

Splits.io is built in Ruby on Rails, but has some help from other pieces of infrastructure.

                             ┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
                             │AWS Application Load Balancer (splits.io)                 │
                             │┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐│
                             ││AWS Auto Scaling Group                                  ││
                             ││┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐││
                             │││AWS Target Group                                      │││
    ┌────────────┐           │││┌────────────────┐┌────────────────┐┌────────────────┐│││ Lambda tells Rails
    │AWS RDS     │           ││││AWS EC2 Instance││AWS EC2 Instance││                ││││ to parse the file
    │┌──────────┐│           ││││┌──────────────┐││┌──────────────┐││                ││││  │
    ││PostgreSQL││◀──────┐   │││││Docker        ││││Docker        │││                ││││  │  ┌──────────┐
    │└──────────┘│       │   │││││┌────────────┐││││┌────────────┐│││                ││││◀────│AWS Lambda│
    └────────────┘       ├───┼┼┼┼┤│Rails Web   ││││││Rails Web   ││││      ...       ││││     └──────────┘
 ┌───────────────┐       │   │││││└────────────┘││││└────────────┘│││                ││││           ▲
 │AWS Elasticache│       │   │││││┌────────────┐││││┌────────────┐│││                ││││           │
 │┌─────────────┐│       ├───┼┼┼┼┤│Rails Worker││││││Rails Worker││││                ││││           │ New file
 ││Redis        ││◀──────┤   │││││└────────────┘││││└────────────┘│││                ││││           │ trigger
 │└─────────────┘│       │   ││││└──────────────┘││└──────────────┘││                ││││           │
 └───────────────┘       │   │││└────────────────┘└────────────────┘└────────────────┘│││           │
         ┌───────┐       │   ││└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘││       ┌──────┐
         │AWS SES│◀──────┘   │└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘│       │AWS S3│
         └───────┘           └──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘       └──────┘
             │                                             ▲                                        ▲
             │                                             │ HTTPS, WebSockets                      │
             │                                             ▼                                        │
             │                                          ┌────┐                                      │
             └─────────────────────────────────────────▶│User│◀─────────────────────────────────────┘
              Sends "I forgot my password" emails       └────┘  File uploads/downloads (runs, race
                                                                attachments) via S3 presigned URLs

Not pictured:

 - beta.splits.io, an AWS Application Load Balancer with an identical hierarchy
 except pegged at 1 instance, pointing to the same external infrastructure

 - livesplit-core, a Rust library with Ruby bindings that gets deployed to
 containers so Rails Web can call it to parse run files

 - AWS CodePipeline, which calls out to AWS CodeBuild and AWS CodeDeploy to
 build and deploy code on pushes to main

Rails will synchronously parse any unparsed run before rendering it, but the asynchronous Lambda job is the preferred way for runs to be parsed because it still catches unvisited runs (e.g. in the case of a multi-file upload via drag-and-drop).

In development PostgreSQL and S3 are also Docker containers (see docker-compose.yml). Lambda is not yet implemented in development mode.

Favicons

Favicons are generated by Favicon Generator and its Rails gem. To generate favicons from the source image (public/logo-imageonly.svg), run

docker compose run web rails generate favicon

Config for this generation is at config/favicon.json.

Theme

Splits.io runs vanilla Bootstrap 4. Historically we used one of a few themes to give it some additional distinction and a professionally tailored dark mode, but we decided to switch to vanilla with our own dark mode after several bad experiences with those themes slowly falling more and more out of date from mainline Bootstrap.

Responsible Disclosure

If you find a security vulnerability in Splits.io, please email it privately to [email protected], as posting the vulnerability in public may allow malicious people to use it before it can be fixed. We take security matters very seriously and respond quickly to disclosures.

Library Information

LiveSplit Core

Splits.io uses livesplit-core for parsing runs. The parser is located in lib/parser/*. To upgrade it, run

make update_lsc

and commit the changes.

Highcharts

To generate run history charts Splits.io uses Highcharts, which requires a written license. Licensing is based on the honor system, so you do not need to enter a key anywhere. Highcharts is free to use for testing purposes.