Preqrequisites

This API must be connected to a MySQL server for this to work.

Installation

Install node modules

After cloning the repository, Go to the folder and install the modules

  npm install

OR

  npm ci

Add ENVs

Next, add your .env file to the root directory.

It will look like this. Please provide the necessary inputs:

PORT=
MYSQL_DB_NAME=
MYSQL_USERNAME=
MYSQL_PASSWORD=
MYSQL_HOST=
NODE_ENV=
TEST_DATA=

OR

You can copy the .env.example provided and paste it as .env

The .env.example contains these:

PORT=3000
MYSQL_DB_NAME=fixtures
MYSQL_USERNAME=root
MYSQL_PASSWORD=root
MYSQL_HOST=localhost
NODE_ENV=development
ADD_TEST_DATA=true

For unit/integration tests, please add your test.env file under the tests/global folder.

You can also use the test.env.example as reference:

MYSQL_DB_NAME=fixtures_test
MYSQL_USERNAME=root
MYSQL_PASSWORD=root
MYSQL_HOST=localhost
NODE_ENV=test

Populate the Database

A seeds.js file has been provided to create the database and its tables and add test data (if ADD_TEST_DATA is set to true).

To run this, just type:

npm run seed:create

Running the application

There are 2 ways:

• If you want to restart the application based on any change in the code (Only for development purposes):

npm run start:dev

OR

• The normal way which requires restart for every change (Ideal for production environment):

npm run start

Testing

You can run the unit tests by running this command:

npm run test

API Documentation

It can be found by calling the route /api-docs upon running the application.

Example:

http://localhost:3000/api-docs

OR

It can be found in the assets/api-documentation.pdf in the repository

Notes

Assumptions

• This API is only for retrieving data. There are no routes for adding, modifying, or deleting data.
• Since the authentication/authorisation module is assumed but there is no information about its business rules and its mechanisms, no middleware has been created to utilise such. Thus, this API is unsecure and all users may query the API.
• New data is added/modified by another module or a direct database change.
• Tournaments have a yearly season or span across years (2-4 years max) like world cup qualifiers, thus, the list of calendar dates for fixtures will not contain a huge amount of data. Nevertheless, the API of getting the list of calendar dates supports pagination for such along with getting the entire list of dates for the tournament.

Tech Limitations and Possible Improvements

• For the tests, a real MySQL database needs to be used because there is no in-memory MySQL database. I have tried using sqlite for in-memory but there are syntax mismatches particularly the date format.
• There may be redundancies in using the res.json. It can be improved by having a common function to format the response object.
• There may be a better way of handling error objects to identify and differentiate the errors.
• This has been developed using Node v21.2.0. The application has not yet been tested for older or newer versions.
• ESLint can be installed for code conventions and improved code cleanliness.
• Extraneous query parameters may be filtered out for better security of the API.
• As of version 1.0, no Personally Identifiable Information (PII) is stored. As PIIs are added, encryption and/or masking of data will be implemented.
• As an improvement for deployment, dockerisation of the application can be implemented.
• Other values may be considered configurable such as default limit.
• To reach a global audience, internationalisation of the spiels/messages may be considered as well.