This Zendesk ticket viewer is for the coding challenge for the Software Engineering Internship in Melbourne Australia, which was advertised on 16 May 2019.
The programming language used for my solution was Node.js (version 10.16.0). My reason for using is because it is the programming language that I'm most familiar with at this time. Node.js ver 10.16.0 can be downloaded from it's official site:
Yarn is the package manager I used for Node. It can be downloaded at their official site:
- In github, click on the green "clone or download" button
- Choose "download zip" in the dropdown menu under the button
- Choose destination for download
- Extract the zip file in the directory of your choice
- Open up a command line or terminal window
- In command line or terminal window, go to directory where you extracted the zip file
The project requires the following Node packages:
Axios makes it easier for you to work with APIs. To get Axios type in the following at the command line:
If you use yarn, type:
yarn add axios
If you use npm, type:
npm install axios
The Github repo for Axios is at the link:
https://github.com/axios/axios
'base-64' lets you encode base64 numbers for authentication. To get base-64 type in the following at the command line:
If you use yarn, type:
yarn add base-64
If you use npm, type:
npm install base-64
'dotenv' lets you use .env files for environment variables. To get dotenv type in the following at the command line:
If you use yarn, type:
yarn add dotenv
If you use npm, type:
npm install dotenv
'inquirer' makes it easier for you to get user input from the keyboard, create menus and work with them. To get inquirer type in the following at the command line:
If you use yarn, type:
yarn add inquirer
If you use npm, type:
npm install inquirer
Mocha is a JavaScript test framework. To get it from the commandline, type in the following:
If you use yarn, type:
yarn add mocha
If you use npm, type:
npm install mocha
Chai is a Behavioral Driven Developoment / Test Driven Development assertion library for node and the browser. To get it from the commandline, type in the following:
If you use yarn, type:
yarn add chai
If you use npm, type:
npm install chai
Chai as Promised extends Chai with a fluent language for asserting facts about promises. To get it from the commandline, type in the following:
If you use yarn, type:
yarn add chai-as-promised
If you use npm, type:
npm install chai-as-promised
You need to create a .env file in the root directory of the project for it to run. In the .env file, type in the following:
subdomain = SUBDOMAIN
username = USERNAME
password = PASSWORDSUBDOMAIN, USERNAME and PASSWORD should be replaced with the subdomain, username and password that you want to use.
At the commandline, in the directory where you extracted the zip file, type in the following:
node ticketViewerMenu.js
This will put you in the main menu of the ticket viewer. Use the arrow keys to select one of the following:
- 'Page through tickets', this will page through the JSON objects for all the tickets, where there are 25
JSON objects per page. - 'List tickets for a page', this will list tickets on pages available, it will take you to a prompt
that will tell you how many pages are availablew then ask you to either
- Type in a page number to list tickets for
- Type in 'back' to go back to the main menu
- Or type in 'exit' to exit the ticket viewer A valid page number is an integer from 1 to the number of pages available. Type in a valid page number, 'back', or 'exit' then press enter to carry out desired action.
- 'Show details for 1 ticket', this will take you to a prompt that will then tell you how many tickets are
available followed by range of ticket IDs, then ask you to either- Type in a ticket ID number to show details for
- Type in 'back' to go to main menu
- Or 'exit' to exit the ticket viewer A valid ID is one that is in the range. Type in a valid ticket ID number, 'back', or 'exit' then press enter to carry out desired action.
- 'exit', this will exit the ticket viewer.
At the commandline, in the directory where you extracted the zip file, type in the following:
yarn test
This will run the test script in the package.json file. That test script will run the file test.js in the test subdirectory.
The ticket viewer basically works by calling the Zendesk API to ask for various information, such as details for a ticket.
To enable calls to the Zendesk API, an instance is created. This is done using the subdomain to create a baseURL and a base64 encoded string formed by the username and password for the subdomain.
To get various information from the Zendesk API, the rest of the URL needs to be given when doing the API call.
What you or the user wants from the API will determine what the rest of the URL will be. For example, if you want the details of the ticket with the ID of 1, the rest of the URL will be 'tickets/1.json'
The user input given at the menu and commandline prompts will be used to form the string that makes up the rest of the URL for the API call.
Originally, the subdomain was stored in a separate file called subdomain.js, and the username and password were stored in the file authStuff.js. Both of those files were in the .gitignore file so that they will not be put into Github. subdomain.js contains the following:
const subdomain = 'SUBDOMAIN';
module.exports = {
subdomain: subdomain
};authStuff.js has the following:
const username = 'USERNAME';
const password = 'PASSWORD';
module.exports = {
username: username,
password: password
};To import the subdomain, username and password, the following code was used in zendesk.js:
// Get environment variables from separate files
const authstuff = require('./authStuff.js');
const subdomain = require('./subdomain.js');To prepare for authentication and create an instance, I originally used the following code:
// Prepare to authenticate
const tok = `${authstuff.username}:${authstuff.password}`;
const hash = Base64.encode(tok);
// Set config defaults when creating the instance
const zendesk = axios.create({
baseURL: `https://${subdomain.subdomain}.zendesk.com/api/v2/`,
headers: {
Authorization: `Basic ${hash}`
}
})Inorder to reduce the amount of code, I later decided to use a .env file to store the subdomain, username and password. The .env is also included in the .gitignore file. The dotenv Node module also had to be added. To bring in the subdomain, username and password from the .env file, the following code was used in zendesk.js
// Get environment variables from .env file
if (process.env.NODE_ENV !== 'production') { // If not in production environment
require('dotenv').config(); // Load the .env file in the root of project and initialize the values.
}
const subdomain = process.env.subdomain
const username = process.env.username
const password = process.env.passwordThe code to prepare for authentication and creating an instance was changed to the following in zendesk.js
// Prepare to authenticate
const tok = `${username}:${password}`;
const hash = Base64.encode(tok);
// Set config defaults when creating the instance
const zendesk = axios.create({
baseURL: `https://${subdomain}.zendesk.com/api/v2/`,
headers: {
Authorization: `Basic ${hash}`
}
})At first, I tried creating menu systems in a separate file using 'readline' and 'process.stdin'. But they do not work well, for example, it would quit the program after you make a choice. Eventually, I found the package 'inquirer' which allowed me to create better commandline interfaces.
Instead of showing a large amount of error messages that most people can't understand, I decided to pick out certain parts of the error object and showing that, then show other brief error messages depending on the status code returned.
A list of problems I encounted with rough solutions in diary format are contained in the file:
problemsAndSolutionsDiary.txt