Contacts Importer

This program uses background jobs and JSONB objects to extrac contacts from a CSV file and store them in a database. The contacts are associated to a user as well as the processed CSV file.

My goal was to finish this small project in less than 24 hours. I'm proud to admit I failed. Not a big deal, is just the results of a very detailed thinking process and I won't make a poor quality work to meet a deadline.

Currently, this project is missing:

• UX: List all contacts uploaded by the user
• UX: List all contact list and CSV uploaded by the user
• UX: Links to change the language (yes, it's multilingual)
• Backend: validations for the contact model
• Backend: more test coverage

What it does and have:

• Supports multiple languages (English and Spanish)
• Parses the file in a background job
• Some A-UAT testing (sing in/up)
• Support changing to all statuses (as per the spec and more)
• Parses and stores the contacts to the database (Contact.all)
• Deployed to Heroku
• Resque with Redis as backend
• Caching of partials and expensive computations
• It has a Bucketeer S3 storage backend and the file can be downloaded
• Allows and supports user mappings in the GUI
• A cool CI and a (almost) perfect use of Git Flow
  • Yeah, this ones I am commiting direcly to develop. I know is wrong.

If I had enough time, this would be the plan:

• Create a model for the JSONB "details" column and implement the validations
• Populate the indexes of ContactLists and Contacts
• Add more A-UAT and unit testing
• Show the features that are implemented but doesn't work on the front-end yet
• Spot n+1 queries with Bullet (included in RSpec and in the browser)
• Cache more partials and expensive computations
• Implement the scoped uniqueness check (that prevents a user from having 2 contacts with the same email)
• Add seeds for a demo user and a demo CSV file

Why?

I tend to overthink and I always want to keep things sharp and snappy. I plan way ahead and that's where I invest most of the time. I already have a plan and know exactly what to do, what's missing and how to do it. Is just a matter that thinking takes some time and sadly more time than the goal.

This mindset intereferes greatly with short deadlines. If I had enough time, say, 3 days, this project would probably be top-tier and outplay most implementations. And is not surprise. The time that I take to make the plan is not "wasted" in the end. Is well invested time. It's more about the architecture and design than about writing the code.

I think that this project, and at this point, is enough to showcase my ability. I will finish it, anyway. If you look carefully enough, you will easily notice it. Are you not convinced? Well, that's cool. Let's have a thorough talk about this. Challenge me as much as you want.

I made costly architectural decisions such as using Tailwind (not a good time saver like Bootrstrap), using a background job from the beginning, using S3 from the beginning, deploying to Heroku from the beginning and using JSONB instead of relational column. That last one is a powerful decision. See, is the best of the relational world, like the through table ContactList (User <=<> Contact List <>=> Contacts) and the best of the document world. This implementation is future-proof. Just think about that.

Installing and running locally

System dependencies

A Linux machine is preferred. Install the following dependencies (the process varies depending on your local setup):

Dependency	Version
GIT VCS	any modern version
Ruby	3.0.2+
Node.js	16.4+
PostgreSQL	12+
Redis	6+
Foreman	0.87+
Google Chrome or Chromium	any modern version
Firefox	any modern version

Instructions

1. Clone this repository locally, for example git clone https://github.com/NoTengoBattery/contacts-importer
2. Change to the project's root directory, for example cd contacts-importer
3. Install the Ruby dependencies with bundle install
4. Install the Node.js dependencies with yarn install
5. Roll a new set of credentials with rm config/credentials.yml.enc; bundle exec rails credentials:edit
   • May need to set-up a proper text editor for this command to work. Try export EDITOR=nano
   • To deploy to staging and review apps, add HTTP login details in this file. Not needed locally.
6. Prepare the database with bundle exec rails db:prepare
   • May need to setup the PostgreSQL roles beforehand
7. Run the server using foreman start and browse to it's URL
8. Execute the test suite using bundle exec rspec
   • The feature test may fail if Chrome is not installed. Run this command if you have Firefox: USING_BROWSER=firefox bundle exec rspec
   • The feature test may fail in headless configs. Run this command if you have headless config: CI=true bundle exec rspec

Live demo

As always, you can find a live demo in Heroku

Using free dynos, so, don't expect excellent performance

Username: demo

Password: demo

Authors

👤 Oever González

• GitHub: @NoTengoBattery
• Twitter: @NoTengoBattery
• LinkedIn: Oever González

Acknowledgments

• JetBrains for their amazing JetBrains Mono monospace font family
• NoTengoBattery for my amazing and time-saving Rails Template

📝 License

Open-source under the MIT License. Oever González (c) 2021.