richardverheyen / news-app

News App

Note on running server: I didn't combine together typescript and nodemon, so in the current configuration you'll need to run yarn build and yarn dev to have live code reloading on the server.

Server runs on http://localhost:3001/ Client runs on http://localhost:5173/

Also I didn't give myself time to fix mocha on the server and write some tests. I would have tested the different success and failure cases of the search endpoint, as well as perhaps validating that the xss package was correctly exiting dangerous characters.

Happy reading, Rich

Intro

This code activity is a way for you to show us your development skills - we’re just as interested in how you think through a problem and approach designing a solution as we are in the code that you write.

Please give this page a read through before we come back together and chat through any questions you might have.

Brief

The app we are building today is a proof of concept prototype towards a news search / research tool where a user could:

• Search against one or more news sites / services for terms they are interested in
• Get a collated list of results, click through to read further the articles of interest.
• Pin or bookmark articles to read later or follow up.

We may or may not build all of this in the session and that's totally fine. Just keep this in mind as background, to maybe help guide decisions you might make.

For today we'll focus on a single source, the Guardian’s content API - https://open-platform.theguardian.com/

The app should present a text field for the user to type their search terms, as the user types it should take that input and use it to perform a search against

Given the result of that API call it should display a list of results, grouped by the Section of the Guardian the items are found in.

Specifics

• The application should be built in (React if you are doing the frontend coding challenge, an MVC framework of your preference if you are doing the backend coding challenge)
  • The application should not call the Guardian API directly, rather we'd like to see you build your own API as a proxy for the Guardian one
• Each item should show:
  • The Title
  • A link to the article
  • The publication date (formatted as DD/MM/YYYY).
  • A button or checkbox that allows it to be pinned.
    • Pinned items should appear below the search results, and stay on screen as search results change.

Use whichever libraries and frameworks that will help you get the job done. Use any UI framework or prebuilt design system that works for you. We might have a conversation about the choices you make, so it’s great if you have a solid reason for them.

What we’re looking for

• A working app pushed to your own Github account - please fork the repo and start with one of the branches for your chosen technology stack.
• A good idea of the decisions you have made while building this. Why you did it this way and not that way and what that means. What are you locking yourself into and what are you deferring to later. What is going to matter for ongoing performance, scalability, extensibility, robustness.

What we’re not looking for, as much

• Visual design. Beyond a basic idea of clarity, any visual design touches are entirely optional. Some developers prefer to leave the design to designers, some get a kick out of making things just so. We like both kinds.