Typeahead or autocomplete is a common feature that people come across on websites. For example, when you are searching on Google, you will notice a word populates before you finish typing.
For example, if the data provided is { "John": 21, "James": 43, "Joanna": 13, "Ja": 3 } and a user queries j, then it returns [{ "name": "James", "times": 43 }, { "name": "John", "times": 21 }, { "name": "Joanna", "times": 13 }, { "name": "Ja", "times": 3 }]. Note, the search is case-insensitive.
In addition, an exact match would take precedence despite of the popularity. For example, a search keyword ja would return [{ "name": "Ja", "times": 3 }, { "name": "James", "times": 43 }] since Ja has an exact match.
When running the app you will have three environment variables available:
PORT: your app must receive requests using this portSUGGESTION_NUMBER: this will be the max amount of results for theGETendpointHOST: the host that will be used to refer to your running app.
All endpoints in this REST API will return and receive (when it applies) JSON.
The initial data is on the names.json file in this repository, in the format { [name1]: [popularityOfName1], [name2]: [popularityOfName2], ... }.
There are two endpoints:
It receives a prefix in the path and returns an array of objects each one having the name and times attributes. The result contains all the names that have the given prefix up to a maximum of SUGGESTION_NUMBER names, sorted by highest popularity (times) – and name in ascending order if they have equal popularity – always leaving the exact match at the beginning, if there is one.
If the prefix portion of the request is not given or empty, it returns the SUGGESTION_NUMBER names with highest popularity (and sorted by name ascending in case of equal popularity).
This endpoint is case insensitive.
$ curl -X GET http://host:port/typeahead/ja
[{"name":"Janetta","times":973},{"name":"Janel","times":955},{"name":"Jazmin","times":951},{"name":"Janette","times":947},{"name":"Janet","times":936},{"name":"Janeva","times":929},{"name":"Janella","times":916},{"name":"Janeczka","times":915},{"name":"Jaquelin","times":889},{"name":"Janaya","times":878}]It receives a JSON object with a name as the request body (example: { "name": "Joanna" }), increases the popularity for that name in 1, and returns a 201 status code with an object with name and times properties considering the new state.
If the given name does not exist in the data (names.json) then this endpoint will return a 400 HTTP error (so no new names will be added, it will only increase popularity on existing names).
This endpoint is case insensitive.
$ curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"name": "Joanna"}' http://localhost:8080/typeahead
{"name":"Joanna","times":441}