Solution to backend code challenge for Review Trackers written in Ruby.

• Ruby 2.7.2
• Rails 7.0.4.3

• Prerequisites: Ruby and Rails on your machine
• Clone the repository with preferred method:
  • https: git clone https://github.com/kcutler/ReviewTrackersTakeHome.git
  • ssh: git clone [email protected]:kcutler/ReviewTrackersTakeHome.git
• Install dependencies: bundle install

The application uses Rspec for testing.

• bundle exec rspec spec/services/review_service_spec.rb

For the assignment, I took a very simple approach by creating a standalone service. The service has an execute method with one required argument and an optional hash. The required argument is a URL and the optional arguments are for sorting or saving the response.

The service has multiple responsibilities:

• Parsing the link
• Validating the link is from a lending tree business site
• Reading and parsing the reviews from the lending tree business site
• Returning the review data
• Optional: sorting the review data by title, date, rating, author
• Optional: saving the review data to a json file

Error handling: The service rescues errors in different parts of the service. When the error is rescued, a standard error is raised with a message.

Considerations: I considered setting up a controller and route, however, since there was no need for a datastore or a view, I did not create a route and controller method. While the Model View Controller (MVC) framework of Rails is helpful, it did not seem necessary in this context.

There is rake task that can be run from the terminal. If it is passed in a url and optionally a sort field argument and save argument, it will call the service and output the review data in the terminal.

Options: To sort the review data, the following are acceptable fields to sort the data: rating, author, date, title. Note the rating option will ouput the results in descending order. The date option will output the results from earliest to latest.

To save the data, pass in save to write the review data to a file reviews.json. Verify the file exists by looking for reviews.json at the top level of the project.

Examples:

• Run the rake task with a Lendingtree business review website:
  • bundle exec rake reviews:get_lendingtree_reviews\[https://www.lendingtree.com/reviews/business/ondeck/51886298\]
• Run the rake task with a sort field argument:
  • bundle exec rake reviews:get_lendingtree_reviews\[https://www.lendingtree.com/reviews/business/ondeck/51886298,date\]
• Run the rake task with a save argument:
  • bundle exec rake reviews:get_lendingtree_reviews\[https://www.lendingtree.com/reviews/business/ondeck/51886298,rating,save\]
• Run the rake task with an invalid url:
  • bundle exec rake reviews:get_lendingtree_reviews\[https:www.lendingtree.com/reviews/business/.%uABCD\]
• Run the rake task with another Lendingtree site that is not a business review:
  • bundle exec rake reviews:get_lendingtree_reviews\[https://www.lendingtree.com/reviews/mortgage/triumph-lending/44068646\]
• Run the rake task with another website:
  • bundle exec rake reviews:get_lendingtree_reviews\[https://www.example.com\]
• Run the rake task with no url:
  • bundle exec rake reviews:get_lendingtree_reviews

Note the commands include \ which are required to run the task in a zsh terminal. They might not be needed for all machines.

• The service works exclusively with URLs from Lending Tree Businesses
• The service only reads reviews from the first page of the URL

• Save file with name of company
• Sort by rating or date in different order
• Write errors to logs
• Separate class into different services

Kristen Cutler