This test is based on the famous Hangman Game. Your task is to write a program to play Hangman, guessing words from our server through a REST API.

• Write a program according to the following specifications. When you run the program, the program should play the game automatically. When you're happy with your score, submit your score to us.
• Email us your finished program! Be sure to include a Readme.txt explaining the cool things you did.
• For back-end applicants, please use the Ruby programming language. For front-end applicants, please use JavaScript or CoffeeScript!
• You can use ANY libraries relevant for this task. Use libraries to save dev time and improve your score!

Through this programming test, you should be able to demonstrate:

• Good understanding of the programming language you use
• Code quality and maintainability
• Good programming practices
• Apply suitable algorithms to solve problems
• Creativity
• A good score! Our average score is about 1000. See how well you can do.

The overall workflow is in 5 stages, namely "Initiate Game", "Give Me A Word", "Make A Guess", "Get Test Results" & "Submit Test Results" You can play and submit as many times as you want, but we only store the LATEST submitted score. When you're satisfied with your score, don't submit any more!

1. Initiate Game

• You send a request to the system to initiate a game
• The URL of the system could be found in your invitation email
• Get a secret key from the system and include this key in the following communications. This key identifies the game session!
• Request & Response

  • Request:

    
    {
      "action" : "initiateGame",
      "userId" : "[email protected]"
    }
    

    Explanation:

    1. "action" key should have the value "initiateGame"
    2. "userId" key should be your email address, shown on your invitation email. please contact [email protected] if you find your email address is invalid in this programming test.

  • Response:

    
    {
      "message":"Welcome To Strikingly Interview Test!",
      "userId":"[email protected]",
      "secret":"2V2GUB00590H33DIEMH24V9V03PU8F",
      "status":200,
      "data":
      {
        "numberOfWordsToGuess":80,
        "numberOfGuessAllowedForEachWord":10
      }
    }
    

    Explanation:

    1. "message" always tells you a human readable message. The message in this response is a welcome message.
    2. "userId" shows your email address
    3. "secret" gives you a secret for the follwing communication. This secret key identifies each game you play.
    4. "status" tells you the status of your request. It follows the standard HTTP Status Code. 200 - OK, 400 - Bad Request, 401 - Unauthenticated
    5. "data" contains some useful data for your reference. In the "initiateGame" response, "numberOfWordsToGuess" - tells you how many words you will have to guess to finish the game. "numberOfGuessAllowedForEachWord" - tells you how many INCORRECT guess you may have for each word.

2. Give Me A Word

• After getting the secret key, you can ask the system to give you a word
• Remember to include BOTH your "userId" and "secret", and put the correct "action" as "nextWord"
• In the response you will have "word" in the JSON. The "*" indicates the characters that you have to guess in a word. The number of "*" in the word key tells you the number of charaters in a word.
• What kinds of Words will appear in the game? please read Words section
• Request & Response

  • Request:

    
    {
      "userId":"[email protected]",
      "action":"nextWord",
      "secret":"2V2GUB00590H33DIEMH24V9V03PU8F"
    }
    

    Explanation:

    1. "userId" should be your email address
    2. "action" should be "nextWord"
    3. "secret" should be the secret in the reponse from "initateGame"

  • Response:

     
    {   
      "word":"*****",
      "userId":"[email protected]",
      "secret":"2V2GUB00590H33DIEMH24V9V03PU8F",
      "status":200,
      "data":
        {
          "numberOfWordsTried":1,
          "numberOfGuessAllowedForThisWord":10
        }
    }
    

    Explanation:

    1. "word" contains the "". A "" sign indicate a missing character in a word
    2. "data"
    • "numberOfWordsTried" - tells you the number of words that you have tried.
    • "numberOfGuessAllowedForThisWord" - tells you the number of guess you can have on this word. When the number is 0 and you still can't get the correct word, then this word will be counted as incorrect and you have to get a new word.
    3. "userId", "secret", "status" - explained in Response section of "Initiate Game"

3. Make A Guess

• You can make a guess on those characters shown as "*" in a word
• You can only guess ONE character per request, i.e. "guess":"P". NOTE: The system will treat two or more characters as a WRONG guess.
• Let's say the word - "*****" is indeed "HAPPY". If the your character does exist in the word, then the response will return you the character in the corresponding positions of the word, i.e. "word": "*PP"
• But if your guess is incorrect, then it will return you the same word. Say you make your next guess as "guess":"K" and "K" does NOT exist in "HAPPY", you will get the response as "*PP"
• If you get the "word" without any "*", then it means you get the word correct. for instance, "word":"HAPPY". And you can then get a new word by sending "Give A Word" request
• Request & Response

  • Request:

    
    {
      "action":"guessWord",
      "guess":"P",
      "userId":"[email protected]",
      "secret":"2V2GUB00590H33DIEMH24V9V03PU8F"
    }
    

    Explanation:

    1. "action" should be "guessWord"
    2. "guess" is the character that you think should exist in the word. IMPORTANT: Only accepts CAPITAL letter
    3. "userId" & "secret" - same previouse request. you MUST include these two fields

  • Response:

    
    {
      "word":"**PP*",
      "userId":"[email protected]",
      "secret":"2V2GUB00590H33DIEMH24V9V03PU8F",
      "status":200,
      "data":
      {
        "numberOfWordsTried":1,
        "numberOfGuessAllowedForThisWord":10
      }
    }
    

    Explanation:

    1. "word" is updated to "*PP" because "P" exist in "HAPPY"
    2. "data"
    • "numberOfWordsTried" - tells you the number of words that you have tried.
    • "numberOfGuessAllowedForThisWord" - tells you the number of guess you can have on this word. When the number is 0 and you still can't get the correct word, then this word will be counted as incorrect and you have to get a new word.
    3. "userId", "secret", "status" - explained in Response section of "Initiate Game"

4. Get Test Results

• You can get your results only when you have finished guessing all the 80 words
• You get your results by sending a request with "action":"getTestResults"
• Request & Response:

  • Request:

    
    {
      "action":"getTestResults",
      "userId":"[email protected]",
      "secret":"2V2GUB00590H33DIEMH24V9V03PU8F"
    }
    

    Explanation:

    1. "action" should be "getTestResults"
    2. "userId" & "secret" - same previouse request. you MUST include these two fields

  • Response:

    
    {
      "message":"Please check your results! Submit the results if you are happy with it!",
      "userId":"[email protected]",
      "secret":"2V2GUB00590H33DIEMH24V9V03PU8F",
      "status":200,
      "data":
      {
        "numberOfWordsTried":80,
        "numberOfCorrectWords":50,
        "numberOfWrongGuesses":300,
        "totalScore": 700
      }
    }
    

    Explanation:

    1. "message" tells you a readable message which
    2. "userId", "secret", "status" - explained in Response section of "Initiate Game"
    3. "data" - your results!
    • "numberOfWordsTried" - the total number of words you tried in this game.
    • "numberOfCorrectWords" - the total number of words you guess correctly
    • "numberOfWrongGuesses" - the total number of Wrong guess you have made. That is the "guessWord" you made but incorrect.
    • "totalScore" - the total score is calculated. The higher the totalScore, the better you did!
      • totalScore = numberOfCorrectWord * 20 - numberOfWrongGuess.

5. Submit Test Results

• After getting your results, if you are happy with your results, then you can submit the results
• To submit the results, you should request "action":"submitTestResults"
• You can keep playing and submit again until you're satisfied with your score. Only the most recent results are stored in our system.
• You should copy the response and send to joyce[at]strikingly.com
• Request & Response

  • Request:

     
    {
      "action":"submitTestResults",
      "userId":"[email protected]",
      "secret":"2V2GUB00590H33DIEMH24V9V03PU8F"
    }
    

    Explanation:

    1. "action" should be "submitTestResults"
    2. "userId" & "secret" - same previouse request. you MUST include these two fields

  • Response:

     
    {
      "message":"Thank You! Please paste this JSON and send to joyce[at]strikingly.com",
      "userId":"[email protected]",
      "secret":"2V2GUB00590H33DIEMH24V9V03PU8F",
      "status":200,
      "data":
      {
        "userId":"[email protected]",
        "secret":"2V2GUB00590H33DIEMH24V9V03PU8F",
        "numberOfWordsTried":80,
        "numberOfCorrectWords":50,
        "numberOfWrongGuesses":30,
        "totalScore":700,
        "dateTime":"Fri Aug 02 2013 14:40:39 GMT+0000 (UTC)"
      }
    }
    

    Explanation:

    1. "message" tells you a readable message which
    2. "userId", "secret", "status" - explained in Response section of "Initiate Game"
    3. "data" - a whole set of data that will be store in our database as your results.

1. Types of Words

• Plural
• Tenses
• Adjectives

2. Difficulty of Words

• Among the 80 words to guess, there will be in different lengths
  • 1st to 20th word : length <= 5 characters
  • 21st to 40th word : length <= 8 characters
  • 41st to 60th word : length <= 12 characters
  • 61st to 80th word : length > 12 characters

1. Request URL:

2. HTTP Request

• Method : post
• Request Body

  
    {
      "key1":"value1",
      "key2":"value2"
    }
  

Sample:

curl -X POST -d '{"userId":YOUR_EMAIL, "action":"initiateGame"}' http://strikingly-interview-test.herokuapp.com/guess/process --header "Content-Type:application/json"

Use a Chrome extension to simulate send request and get response in order to familiar with yourself with the flow

Yes! send another "Give Me A Word" request, i.e. "action":"nextWord"

Yes and No! You can submit your test results as many times as you want. BUT we ONLY store your LATEST submission.

Yes! you can always initiate a new game and play the game again and again. BUT always remember to submit your results if you are happy with your performance on a certain game.

We have a lot of applicants playing the game. Unfortunately, our server is not made to handle a lot of load at the same time, so it could timeout. As you are writing a client program, you should handle this case. This is just something you have to deal with when you write production software.

This is because you have a wrong secret key.

We get this comments sometimes. In most cases, it's because the applicants didn't handle certain cases. Close to a thosand of applicants have played the game with no issue. So please read this document carefully before you jump into this conclusion. No software is bug-free though, so if you have carefully thought about it and still can't proceed, email us.

If you have any questions, please write to [email protected]. Got an unexpected error in the API? Please send us your HTTP request body and response (if any).

HAVE FUN!