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AU Room Timetable App

Find available rooms at Aarhus University and view their schedules in real-time.

Features

Frontend

  • Smart Room Search - Fast, intuitive search with instant results
  • Geolocation-Based Recommendations - Automatically shows the 5 nearest buildings based on your location
  • Favorites System - Save your frequently used rooms with localStorage persistence
  • Interactive Calendar - Date picker with real-time schedule visualization
  • Live Availability Status - Real-time occupied/available badges with time estimates
  • Fully Responsive - Optimized for mobile, tablet, and desktop
  • SEO Optimized - Danish metadata and structured data for better discoverability
  • Modern UI - Clean, professional design with Tailwind CSS and shadcn/ui components

Backend

  • Custom GWT-RPC Decoder - A from-scratch implementation that reverse-engineers Google Web Toolkit's RPC protocol specifically for AU's timetable API
    • Handles complex serialization formats with history tracking
    • Supports nested objects, arrays, and back-references
    • Transforms proprietary GWT format into clean JSON
    • This was the most challenging and rewarding part of the project!
  • Clean Architecture - Standard Go project layout with separation of concerns
    • Handlers (HTTP layer)
    • Services (business logic)
    • Clients (external API communication)
    • Middleware (auth, logging, CORS)
  • Structured JSON Logging - Production-ready logging with configurable log levels
  • Bearer Token Authentication - Secure communication between frontend and backend
  • State Management - Efficient room subscription tracking
  • Session Management - Automatic token refresh for AU timetable API
  • High Performance - Concurrent request handling with proper timeouts
  • Docker Ready - Multi-stage builds for optimized containers

Quick Start

Prerequisites

  • Docker & Docker Compose
  • OpenSSL (for generating secrets)

Setup

  1. Clone the repository

    git clone <your-repo-url>
cd au-timetable-app

  2. Generate secrets and create .env file

    make setup

  3. Start the application

    make run

  4. Access the application

Other Commands

make stop        # Stop all containers
make logs        # View container logs
make http        # Run backend locally (without Docker)
make test        # Run tests

Development

Run backend locally

make http

Run backend in development mode

make http-dev

Run tests

make test

Build production binaries

make build

Project Structure

.
├── backend/
│   ├── cmd/
│   │   ├── api/              # API server entry point
│   │   └── decode/           # CLI tool for decoding GWT-RPC payloads
│   ├── internal/
│   │   ├── handler/          # HTTP handlers
│   │   ├── service/          # Business logic
│   │   ├── client/           # External API clients
│   │   ├── middleware/       # Auth, logging, etc.
│   │   ├── config/           # Configuration management
│   │   └── state/            # Application state
│   ├── pkg/
│   │   ├── gwtrpc/           # GWT-RPC protocol implementation ⭐
│   │   │   ├── decoder/      # Custom decoder (the pride and joy!)
│   │   │   ├── encoder/      # Request encoder
│   │   │   └── parser/       # Response parser
│   │   └── logger/           # Structured JSON logging
│   └── testdata/             # Test fixtures
├── frontend/
│   ├── app/
│   │   ├── schedule/[roomId]/ # Room detail pages
│   │   └── api/              # API proxy routes
│   ├── components/           # Reusable React components
│   └── lib/                  # Utilities and helpers
├── .env.example              # Environment variables template
├── docker-compose.yml
└── Makefile

Technical Highlights

The GWT-RPC Decoder

The crown jewel of this project is the custom GWT-RPC decoder (backend/pkg/gwtrpc/decoder/). GWT-RPC is a proprietary serialization protocol used by Google Web Toolkit, and there are no existing Go implementations.

What makes it special:

  • Reverse Engineered Protocol - Built by analyzing network traffic and GWT source code
  • Complex Type Handling - Manages nested objects, arrays, maps, and custom types
  • History Tracking - Implements GWT's object reference system for deduplication
  • Back-Reference Resolution - Handles circular references and object reuse
  • Production Tested - Processes real AU timetable data with 100% accuracy

Example usage:

decoder := decoder.NewDecoder(payloadBuffer)
result, err := decoder.Decode()
// Transforms GWT binary format into structured Go data

You can even use it as a standalone CLI tool:

make decode payload.txt

Author

Created by Mikkel Maae Østergaard

Not affiliated with Aarhus Universitet