ZIP Code Range Aggregator

GitHub Repository

Just a quick note: I included the compiled JAR file (build/libs/zip-aggregator-service-0.1.0.jar) in the repository, so if you want to skip compiling the source and just try running it, you can download the jar and java -jar build/libs/zip-aggregator-service-0.1.0.jar to run it.

Overview of Building Out This Exercise

I started approaching this with the intent of delivering a web service to meet the requirements. I had the base logic completed in about an hour and 20 minutes, working, and then spent way too much time building it into a basic service.

Brass Tacks: How to run it.

There are two-and-a-half ways to pass data into this solution and receive results back:

1. Run the jar. This app was built using Spring Boot and compiles down to an executable jar. Run the jar in the build/libs folder and it will spin up the Spring Boot Actuator, listening at localhost to port 8090 (and 8091 for management). The input sequence of pairs is passed in as a request parameter called "ranges," so a valid GET request looks like: <http://localhost:8090/zip-aggregator?ranges=[94133,94133] [94200,94299]>
   • The "half" way is that you run the jar and then open the manual-test.html file in a browser (which is in the same path as this readme file). It has links to run three canned scenarios.
2. Run the JUnit test. There's a parameterized unit test under src/test that will run the aggregator without needing to start the jar or use a browser. If you want to add more test scenarios, just edit the parameter collection with the input value first and the expected value second.

Caveats

####Some things to keep in mind:

• I started down the path of consuming and producing JSON, but ultimately decided it didn't meet the problem's criteria of using restrictions "stored as a series of ranges of 5 digit codes". Instead (and for expedience) I landed on the text string as request parameter, response string as response body. This could very easily be modified to pass around JSON.
• I decided not to do a lot of validation, and as a consequence to not put a lot of effort into pretty error messages. The app expects a series of paired values enclosed in square brackets, separated by whitespace. The numbers inside the brackets must be 5-digit integers. Any pairs that don't match the criteria (e.g. have only 4 digits or have inline alphabetic characters) are just ignored.