atrivedi1 / nearest-store-locator

JS, Node, and MongoDB app. Leverages Google Places/Geocodes APIs to find the nearest store to a given address.

Nearest Store Locator Application

##Description The following application allows a user to find the nearest store to a given address by leveraging Google Map's Autocomplete and Geocode APIs.

For the purposes of this exercise, the addresses are compared to stub store location information contained in MongoDB.

##Assumptions

1. UI

• I decided to do away with a submit button for the address form, assuming that the user can select an address either by clicking on or pressing enter/return

2. Google APIs

• For v1 I decided to limit Google's Autocomplete results to locations in the US and addresses (opposed to business names)

3. Server/Controller

• To calculate the distance between two coordinates I used the following formula: http://www.geodatasource.com/developers/javascript
• In order to find the nearest store to a target address, I decided to compare the target address to every store located in the SAME STATE vs. every store in the database. This may lead to incorrect results given that it's possible a store in a different state is actually the nearest store to a given target address. However I thought the efficiency/accuracy trade-off was worth it for v1.

4. Database

• For v1 I decided to seed a MongoDB with seed json data located in the "seed.json" file in the root directory
• Given the nature of the data, a SQL database may be a better fit down the line

5. Tests

• For v1 I added a basic happy and sad path test to ensure the store controller returns the appropriate data based on the client side request

##Getting Started

1. Clone repo to your machine
2. Ensure that you have MongoDB installed on your machine
3. In newly created folder, run the following commands:

• 'npm install'
• 'npm run start'

4. Change the name of the "api_keys_demo.js" file in the client/config folder to "api_keys.js"
5. Inside of your new api_keys.js file, inside of the placeholder empty string, add your own google api key. You can get one here: -https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/get-api-key

##Testing

1. Run 'npm test' within the repo directory