For this assessment, students are tasked with developing a front-end React application that interfaces with Spotify's API in order to get genre's, artists, and sample songs. The user will then be able to listen to songs and guess which artist created it.
The Business Requirements are located in the REQUIREMENTS.md file.
The specification for this assessment is written in a way that resembles the kind of informal requirements document you may recieve on a client site or the level of detail you may have after a few meetings with stakeholders/product owners. It is written from a non-technical viewpoint with no regards for the technical requirements that the project may incur.
When given large problems like this, it is easy to try to start coding immediately. This may not be the best approach to solving large problems - it can often make you waste a lot of time because you'll start solving problems before you really know what problems you need to solve. In order to get a sense for what is required technically, it is recommended that you first go through the Business Requirements thoroughly and try to envision the end goal from a business point of view. After that, go through it again from a technical perspective and begin mapping out mentally and physically (on paper if you'd like) the things you'll need to use and understand. For this project, these things may include: Missing requirements that you need to clarify, Spotify endpoints, A skeleton/wireframe of your components, routes, required business logic for selecting random artists within a genre, how to play a song in the browser, and so on. Note that these things don't require you to start coding - they require you to research and read documentation.
The following will be an unorganized collection of technical information that could be helpful for this assessment.
When debugging or trying to solve problems within the React and JavaScript ecosystem, it will be helpful to include react or javascript in your google searches. For example, searching for web playback javascript gives me howler.js which seems useful for playing audio. Learning how to google well is one of the most important skills to hone as a developer - especially when dealing with a quickly changing ecosystem.
When getting a track from Spotify's API, it gives you a preview_url which will be needed to play a sample for a given song.
To simplify authenticating with Spotify's API, a skeleton is given which calls a service in the cloud to get a spotify_access_token. An example request using this token is provided in the project.
services/api.js has been provided as a convenience wrapper around fetch
The code in the services/api.js file should not need modification. If you feel that you need to modify it, please speak with an instructor about it first.
URL encoding converts characters into a format that can be transmitted over the Internet. The url encoding for a 'space' character is '%20'.
This assessment is large and you should use your time wisely. UI design and styling should be your LAST priority. Get the majority of the functionality in the application built along with a basic minimal wireframe of your components. Once you've done that and it works, begin thinking about a minimal and clean UI. A business/product owner/stakeholder would much rather have something that doesn't look pretty, but works, than have something that looks great but doesn't do anything.