Why should we know ALGORITHMS?

Suganya Muthukumar — Fri, 08 May 2020 08:55:42 +0000

Learning has no end, be it any industry we work in. It is inevitable and a continuous process.But,the question is how much do we put to use in our day to day life.

In this post, I specifically like to emphasize on the algorithms we learn, which is considered as a kind of mandate for any Software developer to know. Do we really use Algorithms in our day to day process? Yes, but not in a direct way. Today we have 'N' number of utility packages, to replace all our general use cases.

Few years back, I encountered a problem statement where we had to migrate the data between two completely different data sources. A typical use case was to convert an expression data into a complex JSON structure. Initially it looked like a straight forward approach but the actual implementation was pretty daunting. It was not a problem which can be solved by nested conditions.It needed a much cleaner approach which solves all types of inputs which by definition known as an 'ALGORITHM'.

On a high level, my requirement was to achieve the following conversion.

Input Expression: '(((ABC=AXE))AND((GPR=ADC)))'

Output JSON: { "exp": { "typ": "and", "sbe": [ { "exp": { "typ": "eq", "vtp": "str", "vst": "AXE", "key": "ABC" } }, { "exp": { "typ": "eq", "vtp": "str", "vst": "ADC", "key": "GPR" } } ] } }

No utility packages will come for your rescue to solve such kind of issues. Knowledge on Algorithms changes the way you look at a problem. Many of the use cases can be solved by using the concepts of some algorithms or by tweaking it. But before all the foremost thing required is, spending a quality time to understand the problem statement.

Checkout my code at git hub to know how I tweaked the Expression tree traversal techniques to achieve the desired result.

https://github.com/suganyamuthukumar/ExpressionParsing

Happy Sharing !!

Postman For Beginners - Part 1

Suganya Muthukumar — Thu, 23 Apr 2020 14:04:48 +0000

As a developer, I always wished if there could be any tool which would identify the silly human errors we make. Given the monotonous way of work it is not always possible for a developer to find all the dependency conflicts, which could break some other while we are keen on developing the new things. At least the foremost thing I would expect is not to break anything.

In my quest to identify tools, which could make my job easier, few features provided by Postman, I felt it handy.
This is post is purely for beginners who would like to explore more of its useful features.

A general use case to a developer is to check the functionality in different environments like Prod, Test etc. Rather than changing the context each time how about switching the context in just a click?

Let me walk through the steps to set up the below API for different environments.
Environment1 url:
http://dummy.restapiexample.com/api/v1/employees
Environment2 url:
http://dummy2.restapiexample.com/api/v1/employees

1. Set up the environment and customize the variables

Select ‘Manage environment’ and click on Add.

Set up the variables for different environments
Environemnt 1:

Environment 2:

Note:
1.Use the same variable names across all the environments.
2.In any case if you have to update the values make sure the correct value is updated in the ‘Current Value’ text box as well.

Now that your environments are set, we are Ready to Test!!

2.Ready to Run

Choose the proper environment from the environment list and use the placeholders to define the context.

You can now see the API response for different contexts.

Happy Sharing !!

DEV Community: Suganya Muthukumar

Why should we know ALGORITHMS?

Postman For Beginners - Part 1