Google Code Jam - CLI

Command line application for managing Google Code Jam contest submission based on the googlecodejam-client API. It requires Java 8.

• Disclaimer
• Usage
  • Installation
  • Initialization action
  • Download action
  • Submit action
• Jammy

Disclaimer

Please note that this client is not provided by Google. Any responsability is declined if a bug occurs when you are using it in a real contest condition.

Usage

This command line application consists in the client JAR and a running script is also available. Here is the usage description :

codejam action parameter

Where action belongs to the following option list :

• --init
• --download
• --submit

Please note that Firefox web browser is also required.

Installation

You can install script and packaged version of client by running the following command :

wget -O - https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Faylixe/googlecodejam-cli/master/scripts/install | bash

Once script has been executed, you can run the codejam command. Please note that installation script should be ran under root permission.

If you are not comfortable with running script from an unknown source with root permission, you can just download the last released jar file, and run it using the command :

java -jar googlecodejam-cli.jar action parameters

Initialization action

This action is in charge of retrieving a SACSID cookie value which is mandatory for querying Code Jam platform successfully. This cookie can be either retrieved using :

• Firefox browser
• Raw cookie input

By default the Firefox method is used, which will open up a Firefox instance in order to authenticate to Google services. Once Firefox is opened and the login page loaded, please proceed to the authentication process, and when you will be logged and redirected to the code jam home page, Firefox will be closed automatically.

codejam --init

If you want to directly supply the SACSID cookie value you can use the --method parameter :

codejam --init --method text

Once logged you will be prompted to choose a contest and a round. Those will become contextual round and session for the current directory you are running the script in, meaning that if you run another time the script with another action, it will use the created contextual logged session and round.

Although you can also specify a round directly using the --contest parameter. It takes in argument the round dashboard id that you can find in your dashboard URL like following :

For this URL, the corresponding command would be :

codejam --init --contest 6224486

This would be particulary helpful during real contest where the round is not indexed.

Dataset extraction.

Since 1.4.0, this tools will create an input and output directory in the current working directory, and create sample dataset files extracted from each problem description. This will allow you to test your solution quickly, as in the following example :

diff output/A.test <(python A.py < input/A.test)

Download action

As it name suggests, the download action allows logged user to download an input file for a given problem. If the contest is active, then it will trigger the submission timer depending of the input difficulty you have choosen (usually 4 minutes for a small input, 8 for a large one).

The following exemple will download the small input file for the first problem.

codejam --download --problem A --inputtype small

If the download is successful, the name of the downloaded file will be printed, so it could be chained in a command workflow, for example :

cat < `codejam --download --problem A --inputtype small` | python A.py

Please note that for problem with two small dataset, the dataset name would be small1 and small2

Plus, if you have to download several time the same input file (because you have failed a submission for example), you can specify an optional parameter --attempt which takes an integer as argument. It will save the file with a different suffix. The following command :

codejam --download --problem A --inputtype small --attempt 1

will save the input file using A-small-1.in as filename.

Submit action

Once input file is downloaded, and algorithm solved all test cases, submit action could be used in order to send either the output file as the source file of your algorithm as well.

codejam --submit --problem A --inputtype small --output path/to/output --sourcefile path/to/sourcefile

Issues

Please do not hesitate to report any bug here. For each issue please deliver the output of the command you ran using the --verbose option.

Jammy

Want more than a command line application ? Take a look at the Jammy project, which provides a dedicated development perspective in Eclipse IDE.