optional-enhancements.md

Optional Enhancements

Goal

Optional enhancements are meant to spark our imagination! They can give us extra ideas for how to extend this project. Optional enhancements should never compromise the project requirements, unless there are special circumstances.

Optional Means Optional

It is more important and more valuable to do good work with the requirements, and to solidify your learning. Please do not work on optional enhancements before feeling confident in the project requirements.

Prompts

Edge Cases

Many waves are missing many edge case considerations. Consider different edge cases in each wave, make decisions for what should happen, and then implement it!

As inspiration, here are some beginning edge cases to consider:

What should happen if...

• when creating a task, the value of completed_at is a string that is not a datetime?
• when updating a task, the value of completed_at is a string that is not a datetime?
• when getting all tasks, and using query params, the value of sort is not "desc" or "asc"?

For each of these, consider what the HTTP response should be.

How would you write tests for it? How would you implement it?

Your decisions should not break the other tests.

Re-organize Routes

Consider refactoring how endpoints are written in the routes.py file.

Here are some ideas to start:

• Instead of having if/elif blocks to handle many HTTP methods in one route method, separate them into different route methods

Model Instance Methods

We can define instance methods in our model classes.

Consider places in your code that deal with one model at a time. Is there any repeated logic or behavior?

Here are some ideas to start:

• Create an instance method in Task named to_json()
  • Converts a Task instance into JSON
  • Returns a Python dictionary in the shape of the JSON our API returns in the GET /tasks route
• Create a class method in Task named from_json()
  • Converts JSON into a new instance of Task
  • Takes in a dictionary in the shape of the JSON our API receives in the create and update routes
  • Returns an instance of Task

Use List Comprehensions

Use list comprehensions in your routes.py logic.

Route Helper Methods

If you have not already refactored your routes.py to use helper methods, do so now!

Consider code with complex or repetitive logic, and refactor it into helper methods. Watch your routes.py file become cleaner and more readable!

More Query Params

Create the tests and implementation so that the user may

• filter tasks by title
• sort tasks by id
• sort goals by title