README¶ ↑

Running demo on Heroku: safe-ocean-7893.herokuapp.com/

Brief¶ ↑

The Flickr API has a method which allows you to search photos. Create a Ruby on Rails web application that allows users to search for, and view, Flickr photos. The purpose of this exercise is to provide you with an opportunity to demonstrate your ability to create a Ruby on Rails web application, to show us how you translate requirements into a working application, and to provide us with an opportunity to assess your problem solving, design and development skills. The requirements below are purposely light. The devil’s in the detail and it’s the little things that count.

Requirements¶ ↑

• When the user performs a search, they should see a paginated list of search results

• When the user clicks on a search result, they should see a larger sized image

• Test with RSpec

• Commit to GitHub

• Deploy to Heroku

• Send your GitHub and Heroku links to PwC

Comments¶ ↑

• Failed adopting the flickr_fu gem (doesn’t support HTTPS)

• Originally paginated Flickr API calls, but resorted to entire list in order to get pagination working in the app

• No authentication required

• Extended Flickraw classes to support pagination of Array (not working on Flickraw Response objects).

• RSpec pain: RubyMine RSpec warning: The Spec::Runner::Formatter::TeamcityFormatter formatter uses the deprecated formatter interface not supported directly by RSpec 3. Installed rspec-legacy_formatters, but could not load: LoadError. Running ‘rake spec’ throws error ‘NameError: uninitialized constant RSpec::Support’.

• No self.errors avaiable in the controller, had to use flash.now instead

• RSpec have(n).items undefined error

• No unit tests, RSpec for all

• RSpec couldn’t avoid breaking DRY, before(:all) doesn’t work for setting up requests (stackoverflow.com/questions/7676728/speeding-up-rspec-controllers-test-using-before-all-fails)

• Flickr image sizes: selected url_q for thumbnail and url_c for larger image

• Bootstrap with SASS for styling

• Thumbs per page at arbitrary 8

• Checked API credentials (secret.yml) into source control on purpose (for this exercise)

• Handy Heroku tip for error logs: heroku run rails console

• Code comments

• Deployed to Heroku (requires ‘pg’ gem defined although never used)

• Basic caching to improve performance, but results will become stale

• Global config YAML properties file (AppConfig)

• Form uses GET requests to support the pagination gem

• Bootstrap lightbox for displaying larger images in the modal popup

Further Investigation¶ ↑

• Where is the correct place to put the Flickraw::Response class extension code? (currently in controller)

• Understand the ‘assigns’ keyword better in: expect(assigns(:foo))

• Should I have written RSpec request tests? Testing the pagination perhaps?

• Are helper classes only for self. methods?

• Proper way to compile assets for production rather than (config.assets.compile = true)?

• Memcached as the caching solution? Need better understanding of global/session and expiry/invalidation.

TO DO¶ ↑

• RSpec pagination testing? Run all tests at once?

Resources¶ ↑

• www.pixellatedvisions.com/2009/04/06/integrating-flickr-into-your-rails-website (starting point, gem doesn’t work)

• github.com/chaoyee/flkrshare (point to new gem)

• hanklords.github.io/flickraw/ (the gem)

• github.com/rspec/rspec-rails (RSpec)

• twitter.com/anoras/status/438354633720090624 (RSpec warning)

• www.relishapp.com/rspec/rspec-expectations/docs/built-in-matchers (RSpec matchers)

• gist.github.com/them0nk/2166525 (RSpec cheatsheet)

• www.gotealeaf.com/blog/integrating-rails-and-bootstrap-part-1 (Bootstrap)

• github.com/mislav/will_paginate/blob/master/lib/will_paginate/array.rb (paginate any array object)

• stackoverflow.com/questions/13187076/paginating-an-array-in-ruby-with-will-paginate (good examples)

• github.com/bootstrap-ruby/will_paginate-bootstrap (Bootstrap styled pagination)

• stackoverflow.com/questions/592554/best-way-to-create-custom-config-options-for-my-rails-app (custom config)