euloong/zendesk

Zendesk Ticket Viewer (browser based)

Installation

Install git if not already installed Git

You can check your version of git by typing the following in the terminal:

git --version

Use ruby v2.5.3 or newer Ruby

You can check your version of ruby by typing the following in the terminal:

ruby -v

To set up this project type the following in the terminal

cd ~/
mkdir zendesk-challenge-eu-loong-lim && cd zendesk-challenge-eu-loong-lim
git clone [email protected]:euloong/zendesk.git
cd zendesk
bundle install
touch .env
echo ZENDESK_USERNAME = 'username provided in email to zendesk' >> .env
echo ZENDESK_API_TOKEN = 'token provided in email to zendesk' >> .env
rails server

Usage instructions

Enter http://localhost:3000/ in your web browser.

You will see a list of the first 25 tickets with their subject and a page selector.

Click on the link for each ticket to view details for each ticket.

Click on the back button to return to the index view.

Error handling

If a ticket number greater than 100 is provided in the url e.g. http://localhost:3000/tickets/999, the page will redirect to the index and the following error message will appear:

 Sorry the requested ticket could not be found

this can be cancelled by clicking on the x.

If the internet connection is turned off or the username or API token are incorrect, a verbose error message is provided for dev environment otherwise it will provide a friendly message for the user.

To test this press control + c to stop the server and run the server with the following in the terminal. This will run the server in the production environment.

RAILS_ENV=production rails s

Turn off the internet connection on your computer and refresh the browser. You should then see the following message:

Sorry there was a problem connecting to the service, please try again later.

How to run the test suite

Unit tests with RSpec

In the terminal type

rake spec

They can be viewed in the ticket_viewer_spec.rb file in the spec folder.

System tests were run with Capybara and Selenium

In the terminal type

rails test:system

These tests can be viewed in test/system/tickets_test.rb

Design approach

I decided to use ruby on rails to quickly build the application, though in hindsight this may have been too much as a database was not required.

I tried to stick to the MVC approach but this was a bit tricky as we did not need to use a database.

I separated the API GET method from the controller and used the index and show views to render the UI.

In order to connect to the Zendesk API I used Open-URI as it was what I was most familar with. I later found out that there was a Zendesk Ruby gem but had already started down the path with Open-URI.

I had some difficulty in working out the syntax for the basic authentication with Open-URI but eventually managed to get it to work.

For handling pagination I decided to use the will_paginate gem to save me time.

Error handling - I decided to use a rescue from StandardError rather than creating multiple bespoke error messages in order to save time.

Testing - I focused on unit testing using RSpec and system testing using Capybara and Selenium with headless chrome.