In this challenge, your are asked to complete a Flask-based API, for a number of e-learning courses.
To illustrate the API, here is a mockup of a GUI, which uses it:
As shown, it's like a simple Udemy.
The API has a very simple architecture, as shown below:
In this, a JSON file of courses is loaded into one or more data structures, when the Flask application starts. This data is used by the API to service the API requests (basic CRUD operations). However, please note that, in this challenge, there is no need to persist the data back to the JSON file.
You are given:
- A JSON data file containing 200 courses (see course.json)
- A Flask application (see run.py)
- The empty API routes (see routes/course.py)
- Some example test files (see folder tests), in Postman and cURL formats
The goals are to:
- Devise a way to load the data into into one or more in-memory structures
- Complete the API routes, ensuring efficient access to the data
- Write basic unit tests
- Python 3.6+
- Flask
- A Python unit testing framework (nosetests, pytest, unittest, etc.)
- Any other libraries you need
- Unit tests implemented using any Python framework
- Include tests for data validation
- Include tests for error handling
- Test coverage of 80% on the implemented code
- Screenshot of test output
You should have a working Python 3.6+ environment (or virtual environment). Install the requirements (see requirements.txt) into this environment. Install other libraries as required (e.g. a Python testing library).
To run the Flask application, do:
python run.pyThe API will be available on port 5000.
The data model has a single entity: course. The columns are shown below:
| name | type | min length | max length | required | primary key | unique | system |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| id | integer | yes | yes | yes | yes | ||
| date_created | datetime | yes | yes | ||||
| date_updated | datetime | yes | yes | ||||
| description | string | 255 | |||||
| image_path | string | 100 | |||||
| on_discount | boolean | yes | |||||
| price | decimal | yes | |||||
| title | string) | 5 | 100 | yes |
Notes:
- The system setting means that your API should maintain the values, not the caller of the API. For example, when inserting a new record, your API provides the id.
- Datetimes may be stored as strings.
Here is an example record, corresponding to the above schema:
{
"date_created": "2019-08-19 11:26:44",
"date_updated": "2020-02-04 06:34:09",
"description": "Django, named after Belgian guitarist Jean Reinhardt, is a Python-based, free and open-source web framework.",
"discount_price": 2,
"id": 101,
"image_path": "",
"on_discount": true,
"price": 20,
"title": "Why You Need To Django"
}The API routes are as follows:
| Verb | Endpoint | Parameters/Post Data | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| GET | /course/{id} | id | Get a single course, identified by id |
| GET | /course | title-words, page-number, page-size | Get a page of courses, optionally filtered by title words |
| POST | /course | [title, image_path, price, on_discount, discount_price, description] | Create a course |
| PUT | /course/{id} | id, [id, title, image_path, price, on_discount, discount_price, description] | Update a course, identified by id |
| DELETE | /course/{id} | id | Delete a course, identified by id |
In this task, you wish to return a record based on the specified id.
## Get course by id
curl "http://localhost:5000/course/101"| Verb | Endpoint | Parameters/Post Data | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| GET | /course/{id} | id | Get a single course, identified by id |
HTTP/1.0 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json
Content-Length: 387
Server: Werkzeug/1.0.1 Python/3.9.0
Date: Mon, 01 Mar 2021 16:56:46 GMT
{
"data": {
"date_created": "2019-08-19 11:26:44",
"date_updated": "2020-02-04 06:34:09",
"description": "Django, named after Belgian guitarist Jean Reinhardt, is a Python-based, free and open-source web framework.",
"discount_price": 2,
"id": 101,
"image_path": "",
"on_discount": true,
"price": 20,
"title": "Why You Need To Django"
}
}HTTP/1.0 404 NOT FOUND
Content-Type: application/json
Content-Length: 42
Server: Werkzeug/1.0.1 Python/3.9.0
Date: Mon, 01 Mar 2021 17:25:12 GMT
{
"messge": "Course 0 does not exist"
}- Bonus points for not using a linear scan on your data structure. That is, accessing the first item should be as fast as accessing the last.
This route returns a single page of data.
| Verb | Endpoint | Parameters/Post Data | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| GET | /course | title-words, page-number, page-size | Get a page of courses, optionally filtered by title words |
Please note that the title can contain multiple words separated by commas.
In this example, we specify a page size of 5, to limit the example results.
## Get default page of courses
curl "http://localhost:5000/course?page-size=5"Note at the end, the metadata field defines the number of pages, current page, page size and the overall number of records which matched.
HTTP/1.0 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json
Content-Length: 2672
Server: Werkzeug/1.0.1 Python/3.9.0
Date: Mon, 01 Mar 2021 16:59:07 GMT
{
"data": [
{
"date_created": "2019-12-25 12:57:58",
"date_updated": "2020-12-18 16:18:29",
"description": "Scala is a multi-paradigm, general-purpose programming language.",
"discount_price": 2,
"id": 1,
"image_path": "",
"on_discount": false,
"price": 20,
"title": "The Art of Scala"
},
{
"date_created": "2019-03-16 05:15:39",
"date_updated": "2020-12-29 08:40:44",
"description": "Agile practices discover requirements and develop solutions through collaborative effort.",
"discount_price": 3,
"id": 2,
"image_path": "",
"on_discount": true,
"price": 30,
"title": "The Joy of Agile"
},
{
"date_created": "2020-09-13 14:40:39",
"date_updated": "2020-09-23 10:52:39",
"description": "Pages is a word processor developed by Apple Inc.",
"discount_price": 5,
"id": 3,
"image_path": "",
"on_discount": false,
"price": 50,
"title": "Talks About Pages"
},
{
"date_created": "2020-07-20 17:51:23",
"date_updated": "2020-08-04 12:06:58",
"description": "Microsoft Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft.",
"discount_price": 2,
"id": 4,
"image_path": "",
"on_discount": false,
"price": 20,
"title": "This Is A Course About Visual Studio"
},
{
"date_created": "2020-07-04 01:02:49",
"date_updated": "2021-01-31 15:07:20",
"description": "Scala is a multi-paradigm, general-purpose programming language.",
"discount_price": 3,
"id": 5,
"image_path": "",
"on_discount": true,
"price": 30,
"title": "Even A Kid Can Learn Scala!"
}
],
"metadata": {
"page_count": 40,
"page_number": 1,
"page_size": 5,
"record_count": 200
}
}In this example, one or more word search words, separated by commas, are provided.
## Get page of courses by title words
curl "http://localhost:5000/course?title-words=enterprise,quick"- Bonus points for not using a linear scan, on your data structure, if title-words is supplied
- Bonus points for returning resulted sorted by the number of words which matched, if title-words is supplied.
- Bonus points for including performance data on the API, in terms of requests/second.
This route is used to insert a new course. As discussed previously, the (unique) record id should be calculated by the system.
| Verb | Endpoint | Parameters/Post Data | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| POST | /course | [title, image_path, price, on_discount, discount_price, description] | Create a course |
## Add course
curl -X "POST" "http://localhost:5000/course" \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-d $'{
"description": "This is a brand new course",
"discount_price": 5,
"title": "Brand new course",
"price": 25,
"image_path": "images/some/path/foo.jpg",
"on_discount": false
}HTTP/1.0 201 CREATED
Content-Type: application/json
Content-Length: 342
Server: Werkzeug/1.0.1 Python/3.9.0
Date: Mon, 01 Mar 2021 17:00:04 GMT
{
"data": {
"date_created": "2021-03-01 17:00:04.252143",
"date_updated": "2021-03-01 17:00:04.252143",
"description": "This is a brand new course",
"discount_price": 5.0,
"id": 201,
"image_path": "images/some/path/foo.jpg",
"on_discount": false,
"price": 25.0,
"title": "Brand new course"
}
}- Bonus points for validating the POST body fields
| Verb | Endpoint | Parameters/Post Data | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| PUT | /course/{id} | id, [id, title, image_path, price, on_discount, discount_price, description] | Update a course, identified by id |
## Update course
curl -X "PUT" "http://localhost:5000/course/201" \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-d $'{
"image_path": "images/some/path/foo.jpg",
"discount_price": 5,
"id": 201,
"price": 25,
"title": "Blah blah blah",
"on_discount": false,
"description": "New description"
}HTTP/1.0 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json
Content-Length: 278
Server: Werkzeug/1.0.1 Python/3.9.0
Date: Mon, 01 Mar 2021 17:11:20 GMT
{
"data": {
"date_updated": "2021-03-01 17:11:20.005061",
"description": "New description",
"discount_price": 5.0,
"id": 201,
"image_path": "images/some/path/foo.jpg",
"on_discount": false,
"price": 25.0,
"title": "Blah blah blah"
}
}HTTP/1.0 400 BAD REQUEST
Content-Type: application/json
Content-Length: 49
Server: Werkzeug/1.0.1 Python/3.9.0
Date: Mon, 01 Mar 2021 17:27:33 GMT
{
"message": "The id does match the payload"
}- Bonus points for validating the PUT body fields, including against the id in the url
| Verb | Endpoint | Parameters/Post Data | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| DELETE | /course/{id} | id | Delete a course, identified by id |
## Delete course by id
curl -X "DELETE" "http://localhost:5000/course/201"HTTP/1.0 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json
Content-Length: 52
Server: Werkzeug/1.0.1 Python/3.9.0
Date: Mon, 01 Mar 2021 17:19:33 GMT
{
"message": "The specified course was deleted"
}HTTP/1.0 404 NOT FOUND
Content-Type: application/json
Content-Length: 44
Server: Werkzeug/1.0.1 Python/3.9.0
Date: Mon, 01 Mar 2021 17:23:29 GMT
{
"messge": "Course 201 does not exist"
}None
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