Preparing for Interview at Mobal.io

Notes

Notes to prepare for a Technical Interview for a Software Engineer role at Mobal.io

Introduction

The technical interview is a live coding interview where you are coding the frontend of an app. You have to connect the frontend to a backend server which you can access through an api. You can choose any modern frontend framework that want to complete the task.

Technologies

1. React.js

Reproduction

Clone the repository

• https://github.com/axelmukwena/monage

Ensure you have npm installed

$ npm -v

Go to repository directory

$ cd mobal

Install packages

$ npm install

Launch

$ npm start

Creation

Create React app.
Prerequsites: Node >= 14.0.0 and npm >= 5.6

$ npx create-react-app mobal
$ cd mobal

Launch

$ npm start

What? Some interesting readings

• https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/learn-react-by-building-a-weather-app/
• https://www.simplilearn.com/tutorials/reactjs-tutorial
• https://github.com/raulterhesdev/redux-toolkit-introduction-youtube

Organization and Standards

Notables

1. --save-dev (only used in the development, not in production)
2. --save (production dependencies)
3. --global or -g (used globally i.e can be used anywhere in our local system)

Cnvert strings to paths

1. Either use

const regex = /[^a-zA-Z0-9]+/g;
const title = "hello123!@#";

// Convert
const path = title.trim().replace(regex, "-").toLowerCase();

Structure

-- src
   -- api
   -- components
   -- styles
   -- pages
   -- utilities

Lints

Install prettier as a Dev dependency

$ npm install prettier --save-dev

Create a .prettierrc at root and

{
  "trailingComma": "es5",
  "tabWidth": 2,
  "semi": true,
  "singleQuote": false
}

UI and Styling

Install Material-UI: https://mui.com/material-ui/getting-started/installation/

$ npm install @mui/material @emotion/react @emotion/styled
$ npm install @mui/icons-material

Moment.js to format our time

$ npm install moment

API and Fetch Requests

Axios

$ npm install axios

Update multiple items
Reference: https://stackoverflow.com/a/32101994/8050183

// PATCH /items
const params = [ { id: 1, name: 'foo' }, { id: 2, name: 'bar' } ]

// Post data to api
async function postResource(path, params, handleResponse) {
  const url = API_URL + path;

  // Only send request if there's a authorize cookie set
  // if (!token) return;

  // headers
  const headers = {
    headers: {
      "Content-Type": "application/json",
      Authorization: "token",
    },
  };

  await axios
    .post(url, params, headers)
    .then((response) => {
      handleResponse({ resource: response.data });
    })
    .catch((error) => {
      handleResponse({ resource: null, message: error.message });
      console.log("POST Resource Error");
      console.log(error);
    });
}

Global store

$ npm install @reduxjs/toolkit
$ npm install react-redux

How to create a store

createSlice

1. Create a directory to keep everything, store
2. Create a file to handle the update and reading of a specific global variable. Lets call it a slice.js
3. Initialize the object createSlice({}) with values:
   1. name: A unique string within the global stores
   2. initialState: {}: The default, initial state of the global variable. The keys in this object will be updated in the reducers
   3. reducers: {}: Here we declare
   4. You can use switch statements when having multiple variables

// currentUserSlice.js
import { createSlice } from "@reduxjs/toolkit";

export const currentUserSlice = createSlice({
  name: "currentUser",
  initialState: {
    user: null,
  },
  reducers: {
    updateCurrentUser: (state, action) => {
      state.user = action.payload;
    },
  },
});

// Action creators are generated for each case reducer function
export const { updateCurrentUser } = currentUserSlice.actions;

export default currentUserSlice.reducer;

Import all the store slices within the global store

import { configureStore } from "@reduxjs/toolkit";

// reducer import
import currentUserReducer from "./currentUserSlice";

const store = configureStore({
  reducer: {
    currentUser: currentUserReducer,
  },
});

export default store;

Then, read and update persisted store value where ever

// Read
import { useDispatch, useSelector } from "react-redux";

const Component = function Component() {
  const dispatch = useDispatch();

  // Update
  dispatch(updateCurrentUser({ name: "Axel", foo: true }));

  // Read value
  const currentUser = useSelector((state) => state.currentUser.user);

  return null;
};

export default Component;

createReducer

1. Create a directory to keep everything, store
2. Create actions directory to keep all defined action names for specific reducers
   1. createAction contains action name which will be used to dispatch payload

   // /actions/counterActions.js
   import { createAction } from "@reduxjs/toolkit";
   export const increment = createAction("counter/increment");

1. Create a reducer directory to handle the update and reading of a specific global variables. Lets call it a resourceReducer.js
2. Create initialState: {} for variable/state
3. import createReducer({}) and set:
   1. initialState argumenet
   2. builder: A callback object which provides addCase, addMatcher and addDefaultCase functions that may be called to define what actions this reducer will handle.

   // /reducers/counterReducer.js
   const counterReducer = createReducer(initialState, (builder) => {
     builder.addCase(increment, (state, action) => {
       state.value++;
     });
   });

Create store

// store.js
import { configureStore } from "@reduxjs/toolkit";
import booksReducer from "./reducers/booksReducer";

const store = configureStore({
  reducer: { books: booksReducer },
});

export default store;

Then, read and update persisted store value where ever

// Read
import { useDispatch, useSelector } from "react-redux";
import { deleteBook } from "../../store/actions/booksActions";

const Component = function Component() {
  const dispatch = useDispatch();

  // Update
  dispatch(deleteBook(id));

  // Read value
  const books = useSelector((state) => state.books.books);

  return null;
};

export default Component;

For both ways, initialize store at top level component

// Top level component, e.g App.js
import { Provider } from "react-redux";
import store from "../store/store";

const App = function App() {
   <Provider store={store}>
      { children }
   <Provider>
}

export default App;

Routing

$ npm install react-router-dom

Routes structure

<!-- At top level -->
<BrowserRouter>
  <div />
</BrowserRouter>

then

<Routes>
  <Route path="/" element={<Dashboard />}>
    <Route path="tasks" element={<DashboardTasks />} />
  </Route>
</Routes>