Landmark Remark

Written by Sai Tat Lam (Kelvin)

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This project is developed for Tigerspike's evaluation.

Building the Project

1. This project makes use of Cocoapods, if you haven't installed Cocoapods on the build machine, please follow the instructions on https://cocoapods.org/
2. Install the latest Xcode developer tools from Apple, this project is built using Xcode 10.2.1(10E1001), MacOS Mojave, using Swift 5.
3. Pull in the project dependencies:

# Open Terminal
# cd <project_root>
pod install

4. Open LandmarkRemark.xcworkspace in Xcode.
5. Build the LandmarkRemark scheme in Xcode.

Architecture

The project is written with MVVM, with the exception of the LandmarkViewController which serves as a container controller with observer that orders the map view and list view to reload data during a data source update.

The application contains 2 entry points based on the login state:

1. LoginViewController - The application starts via this screen when there is no current session of a logged in user. A user can perform log in on this screen or signs up by tapping the "New user? Sign up here" button. When a user successfully signs up, the application will automatically perform a login and enters the logged in flow.
2. LandmarkViewController - This screen becomes the root view controller when there is a logged in user, either from a persisted session at launch or after a successful login. The LandmarkViewController features a segmented controller where the user can view a collection of crowd saved notes via map view or list view.
   1.1 The map view displays saved notes as a pin annotation with callout upon tapping on it, as well as the device's current location. (Spec requirement #1, #3, #4)
   1.2 The list view displays the geo-coordinates of the notes, the message and the author as a table view, with a search bar that allows user to search note by message or username. (Spec requirement #4 #5)
3. ComposeNewNoteViewController - When a user taps the compose button on the right of the navigation bar while in LandmarkViewController screen, the ComposeNewNoteViewController screen presents to allow user to compose a new note on the device's current location. (Spec requirement #2)

Time spent on components

1. Login / Signup - 3 Hours
2. LandmarkViewController - 2 Hours
3. LandmarkMapViewController - 3 Hours
4. LandmarkListViewController - 1.5 Hour
5. LandmarkListViewController (Search bar) 1 Hour
6. Composing new note - 2 Hours

Total: 12.5 man-Hours

Implicit Requirements

Backend component - As the spec identifies, the app needs to sync with notes published by multiple users who use the same app / service. I have set up a Firebase Realtime Database to drive the backend aspect of the app.

Third-party libraries

While the spec did specify to use no third party libraries except those explicitly called out, I have included a small amount of libraries, with reasons detailed below.

1. Cocoapods - Libraries and packages management
2. SwiftLint - I've included SwiftLint into the Podfile as a dependency. The advantage is that it is directly integrated into the codebase to enforce a style-guide is in place. This ensures consistent readability.
3. Firebase - Since I have chosen to use Firebase as a BaaS for the backend component for the app, it makes sense to use the official Firebase iOS SDK instead of reinventing the wheel to write my own API adapter.

Limitations

Network request mocking (Firebase) - With this project, given the time constraint I was unable to set up a reliable way to to stub out Firebase's network request to provide an isolated controlled environment to run certain unit tests. Ideally, and in the past, I have used libraries such as OHHTTPStubs and Swifter to mock the API in order to perform unit tests using TDD approach, as such it introduces inconsistency into UI Testing, therefore I have decided against writing UI test cases until I'm able to figure out how to mock the Firebase environment.