chitter

Software engineering exercise: Build a console-based social networking application.

Exercise instructions

Implement a console-based social networking application (similar to Twitter) satisfying the scenarios below.

Desired features of the application

Posting: Alice can publish messages to a personal timeline.

> Alice -> I love the weather today
> Bob -> Damn! We lost!
> Bob -> Good game though.

Reading: I can view Alice and Bob’s timelines.

> Alice
I love the weather today (5 minutes ago)
> Bob
Good game though. (1 minute ago)
Damn! We lost! (2 minutes ago)

Following: Charlie can subscribe to Alice’s and Bob’s timelines, and view an aggregated list of all subscriptions.

> Charlie -> I'm in New York today! Anyone want to have a coffee?
> Charlie follows Alice
> Charlie wall
Charlie - I'm in New York today! Anyone want to have a coffee? (2 seconds ago)
Alice - I love the weather today (5 minutes ago)
> Charlie follows Bob
> Charlie wall
Charlie - I'm in New York today! Anyone wants to have a coffee? (15 seconds ago)
Bob - Good game though. (1 minute ago)
Bob - Damn! We lost! (2 minutes ago)
Alice - I love the weather today (5 minutes ago)

Further instructions

• The application must use the console for input and output.
• Users submit commands to the application. There are four commands.
• “posting”, “reading”, etc. are not part of the commands; commands always start with the user’s name.

Feature	Command
posting	user name -> message
reading	user name
following	user name follows another user
wall	user name wall

• Handling of exceptions or invalid commands can be neglected for this exercise. It can be assumed that the user will always type the correct commands (sunny day scenario).
• The application need not work over a network or across processes. For the purpose of this exercise, it can all be done in memory, assuming that users will all use the same terminal.
• Non-existing users should be created as they post their first message. The application should not start with a pre-defined list of users.

Instructions on how to run the application

System prerequisites: Java SE Runtime Environment 8 or higher

With an installed JRE (Java Runtime Environment), please navigate to the provided directory called 'run' and execute the following command on the command-line shell, sometimes called the command prompt or the terminal:

java -jar chitter.jar

For a deeper code analysis and a review of the test suites, please consider firing up your favourite IDE. The project should be easy to rebuild and repackage using Apache Maven as an automated build tool.