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Prerequisites

Make sure you have the following installed

  • These instructions use NPM but you may consider Yarn as well if you're more comfortable with that.
  • Angular CLI

How to Run

  1. Check out the Prerequests section above!

Launching the App

  1. npm install <-- Make sure your dependencies are up-to-date!
  2. ng serve --open: this will start the application and automatically open it in your default browser. Leave off the --open option to just start it without auto-launching

Tests

  • Unit: ng test
  • End-to-end: ng e2e

Gotchas

Angular Material

I used Angular Material for this app as it provides a nice clean and simple user experience. Be careful when importing Material Modules though as they increase module load time and, if not imported correctly, will cause the application to not render. It can be easy to make such a mistake if you accidentally important the same module twice - this is the main reason I've created AppMaterialModule.

Unit Test Scenario for PostService::shuffle

To not write a test scenario for the shuffle method within PostService that checks to ensure the resulting array is in a different order than the original array. Though the probability is small, there's a 1/n! chance the elements will come out in the same order they were sent in.

End-to-End Testing Framework

Protractor is being used as end-to-end testing framework but is being deprecated (reaching end of development lifecycle in Fall of 2022) as mentioned here. The end-to-end tests should be migrated to Cypress or something similar.

Design Choices

Code Structure

I prefer a flat folder structure as opposed to deeply nested directory structure. Editors will sort files alphabetically so as long as consistent naming standards are followed it is just as easy to find files (keyboard shortcuts are great too!) And in addition, you don't need several clicks to drill into a deeply nested folder.

Error Handling on API Call

In case of API failure, I chose to rethrow errors from the GET: /posts call back to the calling component to allow for easily readable markup that closely aligns with API response. Another option would be to catch the exception and return an empty list but I believe the selected design allows for more flexible and readable code.

Post Component Toggle

I implemented the logic of replacing the information on the component with the alternative information (userId vs. id) using a list of enumerated values and a modulus operator. This allows us to easily add additional information to the PostComponent by adding an addition array element into the POST_SIDES constant

Note(s):

  • I could have added a #11 to the link above to link to the line-number but I've found that's often not the best choice when a file is undergoing active development.
  • If additional sides are added, additional css should be added to allow for better text centering within the post container.

Responsive Design

I pride myself on making apps that are mobile friendly and almost always develop with the responsive "Toogle device toolbar" on. If you resize your browser or view the application from your phone, you should see the squares adjust size to fit within your screen. This has been tested down to a width of 240px (Unihertz Jelly viewport)

Layout

I really like Flexbox and prefer it for most use-cases, but Grid makes more sense for something that is a strict 10x10 layout.

Angular Material (again)

As mentioned in the Gotchas section, this application uses Angular Material. Though I do like this look and feel, it does give a minor impression that the app is somehow connected to Google. Decisions such as these should be carefully considered by the organization.

Additional Fun

I like the idea that there's a grid of information, some how which isn't visible until the post is "turned over" and thought it might be fun to show an association between posts from the same user. The API return elements sorted by userId so row 1 contains all posts from userId=1, row 2 contains all posts from userId=1, etc. but this isn't guaranteed and I thought it would be fun to highlight posts from related users. You can see the power of this but switching the SHUFFLE constant to true in post/constants.ts. Screenshot of this functionality is provided below.

To Use, or Not to Use a Spinner??

I decided to not use a spinner when loading the posts. The call comes back consistently fast and so presenting a loader for a quarter of a second gives the impression that the page is 'flickering' incorrectly. If API call time would be > 0.5s I would reconsider.