/challenge-booking-uploader

Primary LanguageTypeScript

Booking Uploader

A web app for uploading bookings from .csv files.

Existing code

Overview

Existing functionality:

  • ExpressJS server with GET endpoint /bookings which responds with existing bookings (from a hard-coded json file that is read in). Bookings have a time, duration, and user ID.
  • ReactJS app which fetches and shows existing bookings in a list and has a file input for bookings files (.csv only).
  • A .csv file with entries corresponding to bookings that is to be uploaded but which contains bookings that overlap with some of the existing bookings.

Instructions for use

  • To install dependencies: yarn install
  • To run ExpressJS server: yarn run server
  • To run ReactJS app: yarn start

Note: This project was bootstrapped with Create React App.

Additional required features

What needs to be added / changed:

  • The app needs to read and parse the provided .csv file when submitted via the file input (dropzone).
  • The app needs to identify new bookings parsed from this file that overlap with existing bookings.
  • The app needs to visualise the existing bookings in a timeline instead of a list (i.e. as segments that are positioned based on their start time and have a width based on their duration).
  • The app needs to show a similar timeline for the new bookings parsed from the file that shows which new bookings overlap with existing bookings (perhaps colour these bookings differently).
  • The app needs to make a POST request (/bookings) to the server to add the new bookings that don't overlap with existing bookings and refetch the list of bookings from the server.
  • The server needs to allow this POST request (/bookings) from app and update the booking list it has in memory (and therefore the list it returns for the existing GET request). There is no need to modify the server to use an actual database instead of storing the data in memory.

Feel free to change any of the existing code (and add any dependencies) to achieve the required specifications / functionality. There is no need to support old browsers, assume a recent version of Firefox/Chrome. If you're having trouble starting or need help with any part, please send us an email and we'll give you a pointer.

Explanations for implementation

  • Batch endpoint - did some research at https://diegosucaria.info/handling-batch-operations-with-rest-apis/. Some recommendations for REST patterns are to use POST /{resource}/batch or POST /batch/{resource}. Using POST /batch/{resource} comes with the added benefit of being able to easily group and abstract away batch operations to longer running tasks but comes with a security risk (in my opinion) or keeping the resource abstracted from the batch operation (if there's middleware attached to the resource actions it needs to be reapplied) so decision was made to use POST /{resource}/batch.