CampSite

CampSite is a Command Line Interface application that parses a local JSON data file and returns the available campsites for the dates specified within.

Running CampSite

CampSite is easy to run! Open a new Terminal process, navigate to the directory where your JSON file is located, and run npx campsite. After installation, enter your name and choose the desired file using the selection tool. After a few moments, CampSite will let you know what's available.

Approach to problem solving

At the highest level, CampSite matches campsites with their reservations and lets the user know which sites are available for the requested dates. It does so using the following approach:

• Take in the submitted data.
• Look through the campsites.
• Associate each campsite with its reservations, if they exist.
• Check for unreserved campsites.
• Compare the given search dates to any existing reservations and check whether the dates overlap or do not leave a sufficient gap.
• Return the campsites which are not reserved and/or do not present any conflicts.

The core function is built using a functional approach to avoid mutation of data, simplify testing, and reduce space complexity.

Assumptions and considerations

The program is built around a few assumptions drawn from the supplied data:

• The dates specified in the provided JSON file refer to nights, rather than days. This is evidenced by a reservation that both begins and ends on June 1, 2018.
• Because of that, searching for dates that are immediately adjacent to existing reservations is acceptable.
• There is no restriction on the minimum length of a reservation.
• Users may have an open-ended itinerary; they may wish to search for only a start date or only an end date, or no specific dates at all.
• Therefore, the user should only be prevented from viewing campsites that definitively could not accommodate their itinerary. In these cases, the application could be structured as to present the user with a calendar of available dates for the site they choose to view.

Extensibility

Although CampSite defaults to check for single-night gaps, it also includes an optional argument to allow for other minimum gaps. This should allow for some extensibility with additional development, and receives several tests to check for basic functionality.

Testing

The test suite strives to achieve thorough coverage using both unit and integration tests. As the bulk of the program's logic occurs in the conflicts method, it accordingly receives the greatest amount of testing. After ensuring that each inner method is returning its expected values, the outer method receives several integration tests.