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Fetch Take Home Assignment - Mobile

Project Goal

  1. Query the json object residing at https://fetch-hiring.s3.amazonaws.com/hiring.json
  2. Display that object as a human readable list in a native iOS app
  3. The list should be grouped by listId in ascending order, and within each group should be sorted by name
  4. Any null values should be excluded from the list

Procedure

The JSON object

Directly querying the object in the browser shows that name and id seem to display the same information, with the exceptin that name is in the form of a string.

This string follows the form

f"Item: {id}"

where id is unique. This information is useful as it is easier to sort via the integer rather than the string.

Retrieving the Data

The data retrieval is done by the loadData function within the main content view. The URL is hardcoded into the application as an object of type URL, which allows the application to use a URLSession to handle getting the data from the server. Sicne only one query needs to be made at a time, and all the data is fetched at once, a shared singleton URLSession will suffice. The dataTask method will fetch from a given url an https response, data at the URL, and an error if the request failed. For the purposes of the assessment only data is needed.

From there, the data from the site is decoded using JSONDecoder's decode, but is manually handled by Item struct. Any empty strings in the name field are filtered out and a promise is made to update the items array in the main content view. If this data fetch fails, there is a simple error message printed to the console.

Main View

The main view for the project has a very simple structure:

  • A list title entitled "Items"
  • A navigation button entitled "Load Data"
  • List elements which have on the left side, in large text, the item name and on the right side in a subfont the listId

Loading Data

When the application is first started and the main view appears, the application will go to query the URL and display the data. However, if for some reason this does not work, the navigation button will also do the same after being explicitly pressed. This started as a debugging feature, but could be beneficial to the user, so it remains.

The List Elements

Due to the relative simplicity of the application, the main data structure that stores the items is simply an Array of a defined structure Item (named items).

Item Struct

The item struct has 3 main member data:

    id: Int
    listId: Int
    name: String

The struct uses the Decodable and Identifiable protocols so that a json object can be serialized into its values, and so that each individual struct is uniquely identified by its id.

Decoding the Object into items

Since there is a possibility that the name field of the json object will be null, it is necessarry to handle that manually using decodeIfPresent. This can be done by adding enum CodingKeys to the struct to describe the shape of the data and by adding an extension to the struct which handles serializing the data. This allows the struct to conform to the Decodable protocol and be read in properly. If name isn't present then name in the struct will be replaced with an empty string so that it can be filtered out.

Displaying items

Displaying each Item had to split into two parts. The actual information on display in the list, and how the Items were ordered on that list. The result is that when items is displayed in the main controller, its order and visual design are predetermined, making the display clean and fast.

ItemRow list element

ItemRow is a struct that takes in an Item struct as an initalizer. From this it contsrcuts a simple view that displays in large text that is left justified the name of the Item. The listId of the Item is in smaller text that is right justified. This makes it so that at a quick glance the user can see each item and what group of listId it is in.

Grouping and Sorting

Since the main view simply iterates across the items array and displays each Item it is necessary to group and sort the Items as an array. This is done in the group function by first transforming the items array into a Dictionary using the init(grouping:by:) initializer to group each Item by listId (listId is the key and an array of Items is the value). From there the dictionary is sorted by its keys, then the Dictonary is "flattened" into an array and the values are sorted, which is done by the flatmap member function. The function finally returns this array.

Final Results

A simple long list that meets all the project requirements. The code is relatively simple and declarative, which means it could be easily moved around a large project. Certain choices like manually decoding the item means that, should the nature of the json object change, it can be quickly addressed. No outside libraries were used which also means that no speciality is required to understand the code.

Potential Improvements

  • More safety checks and data handling edge cases for the JSON object. If the id and name weren't identical and unique then it would have been necessary to give each Item a UUID for example.
  • Not putting the entire application essentially in the main view controller.
  • Segmented list to display items. Currently the list is a bit too long and could suffice from different sections or subheadings within the list. However I was unsure how this would play into the scope of the project.
  • Proper error handling for a bad URL or bad JSON object or bad decode.
  • Incrementally loading in data from the server using URLSession to reduce network load and space used.

Citations

Update from Fetch

I didn't get the internship, but I am leaving this up as a sort of lesson to myself and for anyone who might see this. I really commend Fetch for actually sending me a detailed response on what I did correctly and incorrectly in my application.

Response from Fetch

What went well:

  • A very descriptive and well written ReadMe file on Github. As software developers, we write documentation all the time. Knowing how to properly document the written code is a great skill to have.
  • Although the project was very simple, the candidate still followed good SwiftUI principle: Combining smaller views to construct bigger views.

What could have gone better:

  • Separation of concerns: ContentView is doing a few things in the project. It is describing what should be presented on the screen, it is making network calls, it is sorting the items. Software developers are always in maintenance mode, and having things separated makes maintenance easier.
  • Error handling: When network call succeeds, a list of items is displayed. But when it fails, the UX could have been better. Displaying an alert or some empty state view could help use understand what is going on.

I think that it is interesting that what I identified as potential improvements were, in fact, why I didn't do well on the assignment.