Advent Of Code

This repository is setup to assist with solving challenges from the Advent of Code.

It allows you to easily run solutions in C#, submit answers and see the response, pull down your inputs, and run test inputs via a Web API or Console app described below. This also includes some utilities to make some solutions easier. See the Services/Utility.cs file for more info.

The main branch contains a ready to use template to start your own solutions. You may also reference the aowensby-solutions branch which contains my own solutions.

Quick Start

1. Run the Program (See Setup below)
2. (Optional) Create a Cookie.txt file to enable puzzle input/submission (See Puzzle Helper below)
3. (Optional) Make the import-input-file API call or use the equivalent in the console app to get your input for the day you're trying to solve (See API below)
4. Code your solution in one of the Service files
5. Make the run-solution API call or use the equivalent in the console app and optionally submit the solution (See API below)

Setup

1. If not already installed, install .NET 10.0 SDK
2. Run the program
   • You have 2 options, either as a Web API with endpoints you can hit or a console app
   • If using Visual Studio or VSCode, use the play button to build and run the code after selecting your desired startup method
   • If using a CLI, run dotnet run from the repo's base folder
   • If using the console app, you will be prompted for inputs, you can bypass these by setting default values in the Console/Program.cs file.
3. Run API calls (Only needed if running the Wbe API project)
   • You can use Swagger, an API documentation and execution library, to execute the API calls, or use your own tool to call to the API
   • Visual Studio
     • The browser should open Swagger by default, to change this behavior, update the Properties/launchSettings.json
   • VSCode
     • Use the Launch (web) or Launch (web - no browser) configuration to toggle if you want the browser to open automatically
     • If you'd prefer to remain within VSCode to make the API calls, I've used the Thunder Client extension. You can import the collection provided at thunder_collection_AoC.json.
   • Other
     • Visit https://localhost:5001/swagger in your browser

Puzzle Helper

This allows you to easily create the needed services as well as submitting answers.

In the Shared/PuzzleHelper folder, create a Cookie.txt file and add your own cookie that gets created when logging into the Advent of Code website. While on the Advent of Code website, if you open the Network tab in your browser's Dev Tools, you'll see the cookie in the header of API calls that are made while navigating the site. This typically expires after a month so you'll need to update it each year.

Ensure that the Cookie.txt is all 1 line.

If you would like to avoid this setup, you can always manually add you input and submit your solutions without having to create a Cookie.txt file. The file is only required when interacting with the Advent of Code website.

Automation

The Puzzle Helper does follow the automation guidelines on the /r/adventofcode community wiki.

Specifically:

• Outbound calls are throttled to every 3 minutes in the AdventOfCodeGateway's ThrottleCall() function
• Once inputs are downloaded, they are cached locally (PuzzleHelper's WriteInputFile(int year, int day) function) through the api/import-input-file endpoint described below.
• If you suspect your input is corrupted, you can get a fresh copy by deleting the old file and re-running the api/import-input-file endpoint.
• The User-Agent header in the Program.cs's gateway configuration is set to me since I maintain this tool :)

API

GET api/run-solution

• Query parameters
  • year (Ex. 2022) (Defaults to 2015)
  • day (Ex. 14) (Defaults to 1)
  • secondHalf (Ex. true) (Defaults to false)
  • send (Ex. true) (Defaults to false) Submit the result to Advent of Code
  • example (Ex. true) (Defaults to false) Use an example file instead of the regular input, you must add the example at Inputs/<YYYY>/<DD>_example.txt
• Ex. GET api/run-solution?year=2022&day=14&secondHalf=true&send=true

Runs a specific day's solution, and optionally posts the answer to Advent of Code and returns the result.

POST api/import-input-file

• Query parameters
  • year (Ex. 2022) (Defaults to 2015)
  • day (Ex. 14) (Defaults to 1)
• Ex. POST api/import-input-file?year=2022&day=14

Imports the input from Advent of Code for a specific day.

The program is idempotent (You can run this multiple times as it will only add a file if it is needed.)

POST api/generate-service-files

Creates missing daily solution service files. Useful when a new year has started to preemptively generate the service files for the calendar year before the advent starts.

You'll likely only need to use this once per year and only if either your source code has gotten out of sync from the main branch or I haven't kept it up to date.

The program is idempotent (You can run this multiple times as it will only add files if they are needed.)

Extra Notes

• The admin of Advent of Code have requested that puzzle inputs be cached (To reduce load on the system) and not be made publicly available (To make it harder to completely copy the site)
• This puzzle helper currently does not use the leader board api, but if you choose to copy this template and talk to the leader board, make sure to throttle (the recommendation is around 15 minutes) and cache the calls to not overload the server