Munros API

Building + running

To build and run use:

./mvnw spring-boot:run

To run tests:

mvn verify

A file postman_collection.json is also available in the repository with some more integration-level tests for running against the application.

Using the API

Populating with data

The application doesn't persist data to a DB. So it will need to be seeded on first run.

To seed the DB a POST request needs to be made to the /munros/upload route with form-data field key file - the value should be the CSV file. This is most easily done in POSTman or Insomnia.

To POST the csv with curl, make sure you're in the same directory as the file then use the following curl command:

curl -X POST -F 'file=@munrotab_v6.2.csv' http://localhost:8080/munros/upload

Querying the data

Note: before querying the POST will need to be made to /munros/upload as mentioned above

• GET /munros - For allowing users to GET data about the munros. Optional query string params can be passed to this endpoint to customise and filter the results. The following queries are available:
• category=MUN|TOP - pass either MUN or TOP as values to category to filter by that category
• sortBy=height|name - pass either height or name to sortBy to sort by height in meters or name - when sorting by heights, and for results that are the same they are sorted by name aphabetically as a secondary sort. Same when sorting by name.
• desc=true|false - pass either true|false to desc to sortBy descending or ascending (descending is default)
• minHeight=_number_ - pass a decimal number to minHeight to get munros OVER that height
• maxHeight=_number_ - pass a decimal number to maxHeight to get munros UNDER that height

Code Structure

The code is structured as much as possible like a typical Spring-Boot service application. The heart of the application is the MunroController as this serves as the main entry point for accessing the API via HTTP. The MunroController is a singleton bean (@RestController). Main duties are serving the endpoints and keeping track of the application state in the form of the List of Munros. (not normal for the controllers to keep track of data - but this isn't backed by a database or even JPA) Once the application starts this list will be null. Trying to query for the data via the /munros endpoint will lead to a 404 error and suitable description of what's happened.

The list of munros in is kept in the MunroService. Since the application isn't backed by a DB, there's a lot of similarities between MunroService's methods and MunroRepository.

The DataLoader - Methods in here serve the function of loading data from a file on the filesystem of the local machine but doubles up as loading data in from the controllers. Looking at parseCSVFile(BufferedReader reader) - if a BufferedReader object isn't provided it will attempt to load a CSV from the filesystem. Since it's possible to pass a reader to parseCSVFIle it can be used by the controller to take data when it's POSTed as a MultipartFile.

One of the most important methods in that class is createMunrosFromData(List<String> listOfLines, LinkedList<Integer> columnIndexes) - this accepts a list of Strings as well as a list of column indexes. It then pulls the data out of the Strings at those columns and provides a List of Munro Objects using the Munro model. This is well tested.