Exercise

NodeJS has a managed packages environment called npm. A package is a functional NodeJS module with versioning, documentation, dependencies (in the form of other packages), and more.

This repository contains a basic NodeJS server with a /package endpoint. When passed a package name and version, the endpoint returns the dependencies of that package.

For Non NodeJS / TypeScript Solutions

Although we are a company that is mainly working with TypeScript and NodeJS we do allow submitting solutions in other languages (although strongly recommend doing it by extending this repository using TypeScript). That being said, if you do choose to use a different language please make sure that there is a clear documentation on how to install dependencies, configure the system and run the solution in the readme file as if you are explaining to someone that never used the stack that you are submitting the solution with.

Task

1. Update the /package endpoint, so that it returns all of the transitive dependencies for a package, not only the first order dependencies

2. Present these dependencies in a tree view that can be viewed from a Web Browser (you can use any technologies you find suitable)

Prerequisites

• Node v12 LTS

Getting Started

To install dependencies and start the server in development mode:

npm ci
npm start

Then we can try the /package endpoint. Here is an example that uses curl and jq, but feel free to use any client.

curl -s http://localhost:3000/package/react/16.13.0 | jq .

Most of the code is boilerplate; the logic for the /package endpoint can be found in src/package.ts, and some basic tests in test/package.test.ts

You can run the tests with

npm run test

# Or in watch mode
npm run test -- --watch

Good luck, and enjoy!

Things to consider

• Look at the inner "dependencies" object of a package for analysis of first-order dependencies.

• npm returns dependency ranges that follow the Semantic Versioning specification, which you'll need to account for.

• The packages update from time to time, just as their dependencies do.

• What makes a good web service? API, performance, data storage, low latency, scalability, monitoring, a great web interface, you name it :)

• Consider the quality and structure of your codebase; is it maintainable?

• Consider production readiness (to some extent) and is it safe to deploy changes?