Node Express Coding Test

The brief

Create an express.js REST API with this route table to act as a standalone server with own port

• id (GET) Returns universally unique identifier without delay (expected < 50ms)
• user (GET) Returns user details (expected response time ~300 ms)
• user (POST) Returns success. Emulate saving to a database with 50% chance of failing to save. (Hint: create a separate mock DB API)

Write unit tests for all endpoints (Jest is preferred)

Comments

There are a few parts to this that I don't understand the purpose of.

Id endpoint

I don't understand the purpose of an endpoint to return just an id. If it is to use on the frontend to create a new record on the frontend, it gives me pause. This seems like a potentially dangerous president to set. I normally live by the philosophy of not trusting the user/frontend. I would feel more comfortable to have the frontend POST the user object (without id) and the backend get/generate an id and validate user input rather than trust the whole object passed from the frontend.

50% failure rate

I am also not sure of the purpose of making the post fail, other than forcing the person taking the test to handle errors.

But then the endpoint tests are going to fail half of the time. So I am probably missing part of the purpose of this requirement.

I wrote them anyway in this state, just to cover my bases.

Unit tests

I am not sure if the brief wants end to end tests or unit tests.

So I added model unit tests as well.

Outside of the constraints of a coding test, I would definitely ask for clarification and intentions for the above requirements.

Install

yarn install

Run server

yarn start

run tests

yarn test

Note: 3rd test fails 50% of the time