Example Full-Stack Challenge Solution

Time Spent: 2hrs 45 mins

This is a solution for the full-stack challenge, includes golang, javascript and HTML. In order to run the server, you'll need a recent go compiler. Then, you can compile and run the solution with the following set of commands:

[bash] git clone git@github.com:djthorpe/coding-challenge.git
[bash] cd coding-challenge
[bash] go run ./cmd/spamserver data/reports.json

The single argument is the path to the data file, and loads the data into the memory. It serves on port :8080 on localhost (so then navigate to http://localhost:8080/html/ to see the frontend). You can run it on a different port with the -addr flag, for example:

[bash] go run ./cmd/spamserver -addr :9001 data/reports.json

The unit tests can be run using:

[bash] git clone git@github.com:djthorpe/coding-challenge.git
[bash] cd coding-challenge
[bash] go test -v ./pkg/...

Here's a screenshot of what it looks like:

Commentary

The command-line tool is in the cmd folder and compiles in the HTML with the go code, so that it can create a single binary for serving.

There are three packages:

pkg/server implements a basic HTTP server;
pkg/backend implements the backend database and handler functions;
pkg/schema defines the schema for reports and updating a report.

There is also a html folder which contains the frontend page and javascript.

Improvements

Within the bounds of the time allowed, I believe this fulfills the brief. One may want to consider:

Adding a sructured database, either in-memory or on persistent storage. sqlite would fit the bill for a single-node server.
Adding more unit tests for the "unhappy paths". At the moment, only the happy paths are tested.
Putting together a specification for the business rules. All there is at the moment is that reports which are in state "RESOLVED" are not displayed.

Any questions? LMK!

Appendix: Challenge description

This challenge imagines that we have a social media platform that is under attack from spam. We have implemented a reporting system for users that lets them report spam to the platform, and our spam protection team.

The challenge is to create a small full stack application for our spam protection team that consists of a server and a web based UI in order to manage reported content.

The UI should look something like:

We provide an example listing response (data/reports.json) that you can use as the basis of your listing. Please fill the appropriate fields in the wireframe, ignore the "Details" link.

Furthermore we need a way to block the content and resolve those reports. The two buttons in the UI should do a call to your backend service in order to block the content or to resolve the ticket. You are free to implement the blocking as you want, however the resolving should be defined as a PUT request to an endpoint with this structure /reports/:reportId. An example request for how to update a report is in data/update_ticket_request.json.

Block: Means that the content should no longer be available to users
Resolve: Means that the report is considered "resolved", and it is no longer visible to the spam protection team
Details: Functionality can be ignored.