Tech Test from Euro Office
Four hours. The first two were spent trying to get the .gitignore file to work as expected in a Windows 10 Visual Studio 2019, so that I could commit the bootstrapped code from a .NET Core project. The second two were when I actually did anything vaguely meaningful, after swapping development platforms altogether and working in Linux Ubuntu with Monodevelop to build in .NET MVC. The .gitignore file finally did what it was supposed to here.
Start in the development environment I know works. Apparently .NET Core applications are just very difficult to spin up from scratch, in my experience. The next time I am trying to start a RESTful API Web Application, I will use what I know I can work with.
In terms of meeting the basic requirements of the test, I at least got started with a controller that returned a list of categories under isloated unit testing. Unfortunately I could not test it manually in the browser successfully due to MVC versioning issues in the Views/Web.config, which I ran out of time attempting to resolve. Had I not squandered so much time at the beginning of the test trying to get an alternative development environment to run, I would have been able to do more with the application, at least laying out clearer separation of concerns with the Home Page Controller making requests to a Category Controller, which would handle the api routes using the urls specified in the test. Beyond using an MVC architecture, however, I'm not sure if the application required by the test is large enough to warrant the application of other Design Patterns, e.g. a Factory Pattern or Strategy Pattern.
With more time to work on the application generally, I would have added a database of some sort to the backend and used Entity Framework to manage populating model properties. I would have added api routes to add items to a category and categories to the category list. I would have implemented tagging on items, so they could then have multiple categories via their tags. This would lead to implementing a Repository Pattern as part of the application design.
One thing not clear in this test is how rigid the format of the API endpoint urls is. I read it as needing to include the protocol and domain as written in the endpoint url, but wonder if this interpration is correct and feel that the relative url on the route should be enough. It's also unclear if the result needed to be in XML as the example appears to indicate, or if it could have been sent in JSON, which tends to be a lot more common in most Web Apis.
Perhaps with the exception of using an MVC architecture pattern, I didn't write enough classes in this test to warrant claiming use of Inversion of Control, but believe the application will naturally align with that principle as more dependencies are managed via Dependency Injection and the Entity Framework is introduced. The Dependency Inversion Principle, which tends to emerge as a natural result of isolating code for Unit Testing and decoupling dependencies, complements IOC very well and if common code functionality is being abstracted with the Strategy Pattern or similar, the application will be utilising it.
I would attempt to view the issue in situ and see if I can replicate it in a UAT environment. Once I've replicated it, I would work through a local version of the appliction with the debugger and attempt to track down the precise bug location in the code that way. Once the bug is located I would attempt to ascertain the scope of the solution required, writing up tickets as necessary. If the scope is small enough, I would attempt a fix on the spot, otherwise I would raise the ticket(s) in the next sprint review/planning session to ensure they were appropriately story pointed by the team.
As noted in my answer to question 2, add a database to the backend, use Entity Framework to manage populating model properties, add an api routes to add items to a category and categories to the category list. Implement tagging on items, so they could then have multiple categories via their tags.
The ones I have developed the most experience with: Entity Framework, for its simplification of SQL commands, and ASP.NET, which I used extensively in my role with Compare The Market.
Antimalware scanning on network loaded assemblies and a fixed memeory leak on HttpWebRequest HTTPS communications via proxy.
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