Coding Challenge

What's Provided

A simple Spring Boot web application has been created and bootstrapped with data. The application contains information about all employees at a company. On application start-up, an in-memory Mongo database is bootstrapped with a serialized snapshot of the database. While the application runs, the data may be accessed and mutated in the database without impacting the snapshot.

How to Run

The application may be executed by running gradlew bootRun.

Spring Boot 3 requires Java 17 or higher. This project targets Java 17. If you want to change the targeted Java version, you can modify the sourceCompatibility variable in the build.gradle file.

How to Use

The following endpoints are available to use:

* CREATE
    * HTTP Method: POST 
    * URL: localhost:8080/employee
    * PAYLOAD: Employee
    * RESPONSE: Employee
* READ
    * HTTP Method: GET 
    * URL: localhost:8080/employee/{id}
    * RESPONSE: Employee
* UPDATE
    * HTTP Method: PUT 
    * URL: localhost:8080/employee/{id}
    * PAYLOAD: Employee
    * RESPONSE: Employee

The Employee has a JSON schema of:

{
  "title": "Employee",
  "type": "object",
  "properties": {
    "employeeId": {
      "type": "string"
    },
    "firstName": {
      "type": "string"
    },
    "lastName": {
      "type": "string"
    },
    "position": {
      "type": "string"
    },
    "department": {
      "type": "string"
    },
    "directReports": {
      "type": "array",
      "items": {
        "anyOf": [
          {
            "type": "string"
          },
          {
            "type": "object"
          }
        ]
      }
    }
  }
}

For all endpoints that require an id in the URL, this is the employeeId field.

What to Implement

This coding challenge was designed to allow for flexibility in the approaches you take. While the requirements are minimal, we encourage you to explore various design and implementation strategies to create functional features. Keep in mind that there are multiple valid ways to solve these tasks. What's important is your ability to justify and articulate the reasoning behind your design choices. We value your thought process and decision-making skills. Also, If you identify any areas in the existing codebase that you believe can be enhanced, feel free to make those improvements.

Task 1

Create a new type called ReportingStructure that has two fields: employee and numberOfReports.

The field numberOfReports should equal the total number of reports under a given employee. The number of reports is determined by the number of directReports for an employee, all of their distinct reports, and so on. For example, given the following employee structure:

                   John Lennon
                 /             \
         Paul McCartney     Ringo Starr
                            /         \
                       Pete Best    George Harrison

The numberOfReports for employee John Lennon (employeeId: 16a596ae-edd3-4847-99fe-c4518e82c86f) would be equal to 4.

This new type should have a new REST endpoint created for it. This new endpoint should accept an employeeId and return the fully filled out ReportingStructure for the specified employeeId. The values should be computed on the fly and will not be persisted.

Task 2

Create a new type called Compensation to represent an employee's compensation details. A Compensation should have at minimum these two fields: salary and effectiveDate. Each Compensation should be associated with a specific Employee. How that association is implemented is up to you.

Create two new REST endpoints to create and read Compensation information from the database. These endpoints should persist and fetch Compensation data for a specific Employee using the persistence layer.

Delivery

Please upload your results to a publicly accessible Git repo. Free ones are provided by GitHub and Bitbucket.

Implementation Notes

Development Environment

• Java Version: This implementation uses Java 21 (instead of the mentioned Java 17 requirement)
• Port Configuration: The application runs on port 8088 (instead of 8080) as port 8080 was occupied by another service

Data Enhancements

The employee database has been enhanced with additional subordinates to create a deeper reporting hierarchy:

                   John Lennon (Manager)
                 /             \
         Paul McCartney     Ringo Starr
                            /         \
                       Pete Best    George Harrison
                        /             \
                 Mick Jagger      Keith Richards
                    /                 \
            Spongebob Squarepants   Patrick Star
                    |                 |
               Squidward Tentacles   Sandy Cheeks

Testing Coverage

Comprehensive unit and integration tests have been implemented covering:

• Edge cases for compensation creation (non-existent employees, duplicate entries)
• Recursive reporting structure calculations with multiple hierarchy levels
• Circular reference prevention in employee reporting chains
• REST API endpoint validation with proper error handling