AssignmentOne.md

Spelling Bee (SOFT8023 – Assignment 1)

Name: Sara Jane Kenny
Student Number: R00255434
Class: SDH3-A

Single-player Spelling Bee game built in Go with gRPC.
Client sends guesses to the server, which validates, scores, and returns an updated total.

Running the game

• Terminal 1, Generate Go gRPC code from the proto: protoc --go_out=. --go-grpc_out=. api/spelling/v1/bee.proto
• Terminal 1: go run ./cmd/server
• Terminal 2: go run ./cmd/client

Design Patterns

1. Adapter

   • Where: internal/dictionary/repo.go
   • What: Hides external dictionary format (JSON) and exposes a simple Contains(word) interface.
   • Why: Server code doesn’t need to know file format, swapping the data source later is easy.

2. Factory

   • Where: internal/game/letters.go / server main
   • What: Converts a pangram into exactly 7 letters and chooses a center letter.
   • Why: Centralises letter/center generation, makes tests reproducible and logic consistent.

3. Decorator

   • Where: internal/dictionary/cache.go
   • What: Wraps repository with in-memory caching.
   • Why: Dictionary lookups happen frequently, caching improves performance without changing adapter code.

4. Singleton

   • Where: internal/game/registry.go
   • What: Single shared registry stores all game state.
   • Why: Keeps one source of truth for multiple games, simplifies state management, preparation for assignment 2.

Project structure

• api/spelling/v1/bee.proto – gRPC contract
• cmd/server/main.go – server
• cmd/client/main.go – CLI client
• internal/dictionary/ – dictionary adapter, cache, pangram loader
• internal/game/registry.go – singleton game store
• data/words_dictionary.json – dictionary
• data/pangrams.txt – pangrams list

Resources

• Lab sheets & lecture slides for implementations for gRPC & design principles
• GeeksforGeeks website & genAI to understand design patterns and gRPC better