AbdeenM / phoenix-interview-task

Interview task for assessing candidates applying for software engineer role at materiias d.o.o

Task

You are building a simple apollo graphql server that exposes a single query getUser and a mutation updateUser as well as setting up a background service that on an interval of 1 minute updates a field from the user object to a scheduled value for message that is prefixed by automated - Initially upon the server running make a single request to https://random-data-api.com/api/v2/users to retrieve the user object and store the user details in memory database for later usage, note that we are not interested in all the data provided by the API end-point thus store only the properties that are needed by your user object

// The user object
interface User {
  id: number
  uid: string
  first_name: string
  last_name: string
  username: string
  email: string
  message: string
}

Notes

1. You can use any packages to achieve the task as long as you comment your reasoning behind it
2. The server you are building should be scalable and adheres with latest best practices
3. The mutation updateUser should only accept a string value, anything else should throw an error

Requirements

1. Use TypeScript to build the server application
2. Set up a background service that runs every 1 min and updates the user object that is stored in memory property message to a value of automated - [DateNow]
3. When calling the getUser query you should be able to retrieve the current user details in memory
4. When calling the updateUser mutation you should be able to update the message property of the current user details in memory with a value of manual - [Message] were the [Message] is whatever the value sent by the mutation
5. Implement error handling to gracefully handle any issues that may arise

Examples

1. When calling the getUser query and requesting all the user object properties a response similar to the one below should be retrieved:

    {
      "id": 3108,
      "uid": "c60f4629-14e8-4bcf-bfc8-00e92222ddb2",
      "first_name": "Chauncey",
      "last_name": "Mann",
      "username": "chauncey.mann",
      "email": "[e-mail]",
      "message": "[some-message]"
    }

2. When calling the updateUser mutation with a given message such that message: "Hello world!" the user object in the servers memory database should update the message property with a value of manual - Hello world!
3. Whenever a minute passes your background service should update the user object message property with a value of automated - [DateNow] where [DateNow] is the current time in UTC format

Assessment Criteria

1. Code quality and maintainability
2. Understanding of TypeScript, Node.js, Background services and Apollo GraphQL
3. Integration skills with third-party APIs
4. Error handling and unit testing
5. Understanding of schedule-based tasks and implementation