rest-api

This API queries a predefined set of inpatient prospective payment systems providers.

Quick Start

To test in a deployed setting, visit therebelrobot-test-api.now.sh/providers, test it out in Insomnia, or try it in curl:

curl -v https://therebelrobot-test-api.now.sh/providers\?state\=GA

To run locally:

git clone https://github.com/therebelbeta/rest-api
cd rest-api
npm install
npm start

architecture

This was built using the following architecture decisions:

• server in zeit/micro, a low-friction express-based server lib
• environment-based structured logs using winston
• request logging, with status codes
• long-query warnings
• unique id's for all requests (ksuid, X-Request-ID response header)
• a healthcheck endpoint for starting up
• eslint, with a superset of feross/standard (npm run lint)
• unit testing using ava and mock-require (npm test)
• 100% api controller test coverage reporting using nyc (npm run test:coverage)
• precommit hooks for running tests automatically
• a development environment server (npm run dev)
• a generic dockerfile for deployment
• sane environment defaults (/settings.js)

datastore

I decided to use a sqlite database to store the data provided. As it's more or less static (in the requested implementation at least), and deployment isn't being clustered/sharded, sqlite provides the lowest friction datastore while still providing a robust query set. I used sequelize as an ORM, and stored both the original csv and the sqlite db in the /db/data folder of the application.

I did a bit of data normalization, namely: changed the names of the columns to snake_case to be easier to query, removed $ from USD columns to allow it to be set as a valid float type, and removed provider_ from the columns as it's a bit redundant in a Provider table.

assumptions

• Given this dataset is specifically setting state, it is assumed the currency is in USD, which allows the wholesale removal of the $ symbol in data normalization. Ideally there'd be a separate field with currency type and a conversion table (for max and min queries) if international currencies are stored in the same table.
• I added max_average_total_payments and min_average_total_payments query parameters, as it seems logically similar to the other query parameters with little effort to add
• Since the dataset is enormous, I also added limit, offset, sort_by (with a camelCase version of the field to sort by), and sort_by_direction (with ASC or DESC) query parameters. The defaults are:
  • limit: 10
  • sort_by: id or Provider ID
  • sort_by_direction:DESC
• To debug/work with these new parameters and defaults, I've also added the following headers:
  • X-Total-Count
  • X-Pagination-Limit
  • X-Pagination-Offset
  • X-Pagination-Sort-By
  • X-Pagination-Sort-By-Direction