This ASP.NET Core Web API provides a backend for Conway's Game of Life. It allows users to create game boards, retrieve and calculate future states of the board, and find final states.

• Upload new board states and receive a unique board ID
• Retrieve the next state of a board
• Get a specified number of future states for a board
• Find the final state of a board within a certain number of iterations
• Persist board states in a database to retain state across service restarts

• .NET 7.0 SDK
• Visual Studio 2022 (or later) / Visual Studio Code
• SQL Server (for database-related operations)

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/marylin/ConwayGameOfLife.git
   

2. Open the solution in Visual Studio or Visual Studio Code.

3. Restore NuGet packages:

   dotnet restore

4. Update the database (if using Entity Framework Core):

   dotnet ef database update
   
   

• POST /api/boards: Create a new board.
• GET /api/boards/{id}/next: Get the next state of a board.
• GET /api/boards/{id}/future/{steps}: Get future states of a board.
• GET /api/boards/{id}/final/{maxIterations}: Find the final state of a board.

curl -X POST http://localhost:5000/api/boards -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d "{ \"initialState\": [[true, false], [false, true]] }"