A basic web application that lists all upcoming jobs that still need a provider assigned, and when a job is selected, the app displays which providers may be a good fit for that job (ordering potential providers by best fit to worst fit).
The instructions for this code challenge came with a 5 day time limit. The app needed to be a POC, meeting all requirements listed below. I could use Typescript or Javascript, and the project needed a distinct backend using Node/Express to be in alignment with the company's current stack.
There's a section below mentioning a couple changes I would make with more time, or if this project was for production. I chose not to update this repository with those ideas, since I intend to use this project to start technical discussions.
- Ingest the provided CSV files jobs.csv and providers.csv
- A backend API should exist which enables getting all upcoming jobs, and for a given job it should return a list of providers which may be a good fit for each job ordered by best fit to worst fit
- There should be a frontend web component which displays all upcoming jobs
- On the front end, when a job is clicked on, somewhere on the page it should show all providers that may be a good fit for that job
- Proximity (if the job is a location based job - the closer the reporter, the better)
- How quickly they have historically turned in their materials
- Cost (court reporter cost is calculated based on their $ per page) - the lower the better
- Ratings (firms can give binary feedback about providers they worked with - either yes they would work with them again, or no they wouldn't work with them again)
Run npm run setup in the root directory to install all dependencies in both the server and client, then run npm run dev
to start the application.
If nvm is installed on your local machine, you can run nvm use to make sure you're on the same version of Node.
In order to move as fast as possible, I decided to use Javascript instead of Typescript. I used Express.js to help build the API, and I used React for the front end and MaterialUI components for easy styling.
I stored the csv files in the /resources directory, just for better organization. All the calculating and data parsing methods are stored in
/utils.
calculations.js stores methods that require both job and provider inputs. jobs.js and providers.js handle their respective csv files.
If I had more time, or if this project was for production I would implement a controller for the API. Since I'm only hitting a few endpoints to grab my data, and this is a POC, I left the filtering methods in the server file, but for a production level application, leveraging a controller that implements those methods is a better idea.
The front end explicitly hits `localhost:8080/api...', for the sake of time, I went about it this way instead of serving client files from the server. With more time, I would focus on implementing a cleaner approach to having the server and client in the same repository. Especially for security purposes.
Also I would add a bunch of tests. Each component would have a test file, I would test each endpoint in the API, as well as my calculation methods. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't submit a PR without tests, but since this is a POC, and for the sake of time, I omitted them to make sure I could complete the challenge. With one more day, I could add a series of tests.