/binogi-completed-challenge

Primary LanguagePHP

Completed Code Challenge Notes

To run please set SPOTIFY_SECRET and SPOTIFY_CLIENT_ID environment variables. After, run the tests with ./vendor/bin/phpunit and the server with php artisan serve

  • In a proper setup, environmental variables containing Spotify client id and secret should be set based on environment, so that tests do not use production credentails.

  • Within a more formal environment, I would have done much more rebasing of commits. For the challange I chose not to, thus allowing to see the exact history of my actions.

  • The SpotifySearch class should consist of static methods only; I would like to discuss this when we go over the challenge.

  • Private functions are generally not commented; they are simply given discriptive names.

  • Testing of generated HTML pages was not implemented for the challange.

  • Spellcheck and formatting were not available to me, since I had to use Gitpod rather than a proper work environment.

  • UI should have pagination conrtols and navigation between pages, which it currently does not.

Laravel Code Challenge

This code test involves the creation of a working project with the help of the Laravel framework. The task is split into three sub-categories and shouldn't take longer than 2-4 hours of your time.

Prerequisites

This code challenge does not involve any use of database connections. Therefore, you can clone this repository and run it locally as long as you have php >= 7.1.3 installed on your machine. Alternatively, you can install a VM such as Homestead.

  1. Option (php cli)
  • On Debian/Ubuntu machines, you can simply install everyting needed via apt, given you have the correct apt repository configured:
    • sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:ondrej/php
    • sudo apt install composer php7.3-common php7.3-cli php7.3-json php7.3-mbstring php7.3-xml php7.3-opcache php7.3-readline php7.3-pdo php7.3-ctype php7.3-bcmath
    • Open a terminal and clone this repository into any directory on your machine, then and run composer install and php artisan serve --port=8888 to start the web server, reachable under http://localhost:8888
  1. Option (Homestead)
  • For this, you need to have a hypervisor installed on your machine, such as vmware, virtualbox, parallels or hyper-v. We recommend to install the free Virtual Box. If you choose to use a different hypervisor, please edit the Homestead.yaml file accordingly ("provider")
  • In order for the custom domain homestead.test to work, you need to add it to your hosts-file (usually under /etc/hosts): 192.168.99.99 homestead.test. For a quick fix run sudo sh -c 'echo "192.168.99.99 homestead.test" >> /etc/hosts' in your terminal.
  • Now you clone this repository and simply run the command vagrant up, then vagrant ssh -c "cd ~/code; composer install" and your application will be available under the address http://homestead.test

Restrictions and Requirements

  1. Please do NOT use any JS/AJAX to solve this challenge but build it in PHP.
  2. You can use any libraries you can find.
  3. This challenge doesn't focus on the UI. Do not spend too much time on layout/css.
  4. You should focus on code quality and structure. If possible and timely reasonable, also add tests.
  5. Wherever possible and reasonable, try to follow the SOLID principles

The Challenge

Implement the following functionality by using the official Spotify Developer's API. You can create an account here. Find out how to use their API in order to fulfill the implementation goals.

  1. Allow your application to communicate with the Spotify API via server-to-server communication. Implement Authentication against their API and the retrieval of an access token that can be used for further requests. (Reference)

  2. When a user searches for any term in the search box (see index.blade.php), the result should be three separate lists: one list with matching artists, one with matching albums and one with tracks.

  3. Each result in the lists should consist of an image and a title (name of artist, album or track respectively). Each result should be clickable and lead to another page which contains some more detailed information about the clicked item.

Hints

We already created the two routes / and /search which point to the controller methods index and search which respectively return the views index.blade.php and search.blade.php.

This repository has been set up for you to start right away. In case you are not familiar with Laravel, here a few hints:

  • The routes can be found and configured in the file routes/web.php.
  • A first controller can be found here: app/Http/Controllers/SearchController.php.
  • The views can be found under resources/views.
  • Publicly accessible assets can be placed into the public/ folder and its sub-directories.
  • When communicating with the API, consider using a library such as Guzzle or HTTPlug