Word Finder (autocomplete) Mini (Full-Stack!) Project

Finding words in the dictionary used to be tedious and slow! Now, its fast, easy and fun!
autocomplete lets you easily find words in the english dictionary!

Why?

Learning how to build full-stack single-page apps can be laborious when the example app isn't particularly interesing/engaging, Word Finder is an ultra-simple app that will teach you full-stack test-driven-development using (only) core node.js modules on the backend and basic JQuery on the front-end (no fancy frameworks)

What?

A great (search) word finder (user experience) always starts with autocomplete. Then when the person clicks/taps on the word they want the definition for, we show them the definition fast!

Insert links to Heroku examples + screenshots here once FAC5 have completed their projects! 😉

How?

Run this project on your Local Machine

Clone the repo:

git clone https://github.com/docdis/autocomplete.git && cd autocomplete

Install the node.js devDependencies:

npm install

Run the (module) Tests:

npm test

Run the Server with Nodemon:

npm run nodemon

Features

Autocomplete Module

• import a list of words into an array called words
• search through list of words for a string and return list of suggestions
• record the string that was searched for (for stats and graphs!)

Autocomplete HTTP Server (API)

• serve an html page with a search box
• expose the ac.findWords method as an API endpoint /find/:word
• display the definition of a word when the person clicks/taps (or navigates using the keyboard arrows - for extra credits!) to their desired word
• display the history of words people have searched for

Goals (in your teams of 4)

Pair 1

Back end (AKA "plumbers" ... un-resilient people look elsewhere!)

• create an endpoint in server.js for the format: /define/:word which uses the ac module's findWords method to lookup word suggestions and returns an array of these suggestions as the http response

In your module (index.js)

• write a test for a new method "define" which will return a callback(err, definition) when you call it in the following way: ac.define(word, callaback)
• write the ac.define method to request a word definition from Wiktionary API (requires google skillz! - document your finding!!)
  • parse the result of this API request and extract the definition
  • return the just the definition to the client for display in the UI when client visits url: /define/awesome
• expose the searches property of the ac module url: /searches/ should return a json object which the client can interpret and display

Hint: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Tutorial + http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4175533/wikionary-api-meaning-of-words (note: you will need to put your thinking cap on for this challenge!)

Pair 2

Front end / UX (the fun zone!)

1. Wireframe a great word searching user experience!

2. Using the knowledge of QUnit for front-end TDD you gained in the last two weeks, build great user experience for searching words! (tip: you can build ("fake") the front-end (look-and-feel) while your back-end colleagues are building the endpoint(s) ...)

3. Display a stats (searches) for the words people have looked up in an intuitive and creative way!

Note: even though you are running nodemon you still may not see the latest changes in your browser when you refresh the page... sometimes you might need to completely re-start the server npm run nodemon to get the page to completely refresh ...

Repo Owner

• Add a .jshintrc file to your project
• learn about pre-commit hooks and add a pre-commit hook to lint your code before anyone can commit (unlinted) code. (code quality/consistency #FTW!)
• Learn about CodeClimate, signup using your GitHub account and add badge to repo readme.
• Learn about (Continuous Integration) Travis-CI and
  • add .travis.yml to your repo
  • add "build passing" badge to your readme
• Add Dependencies Badge to your readme

see: https://github.com/dwyl/repo-badges

Stretch Goals

Deploy to Heroku

Ask @Neats29 for help if you get stuck!

Integrate Another API into your results!! 😮

e.g: Search for Tweets based on the word the person looked up! or pictures on instagram, or news articles, etc.

Figure out a creative way of displaying this content without making it look cluttered or out of place. (as always, #MobileFirst #FTW)

Make the UI even more intuitive!

• hightlight the characters the person typed in the word suggestions

Search for a string of characters anywhere in the word!

Returning words that start with the characters the person typed is cool. But, what about returning all the words that contain the characters in the order the person typed them. (i.e. way more suggestions so that this can be used as a scrabble word finder!)

e.g: a search for awe

could return:

adawe, awe, awearied, aweary, aweather, aweband, awedness, awee, aweek,
aweel, aweigh, awesome, awesomely, awesomeness, awest, aweto, chawer,
clapperclawer, clawed, clawer, cockawee, dewclawed, drawee, drawer, drawers,
flawed, fleaweed, gewgawed, gimbaljawed, gimberjawed, gnawer, hawer, jawed,
jimberjawed, keawe, knawel, Meccawee, megaweber, outawe, overawe, overdrawer,
overjawed, pawer, plugdrawer, predrawer, quartersawed, redrawer, resawer,
 rondawel, Sandawe, sawed, sawer, scrofulaweed, seaweed, seaweedy, strawen,
strawer, tawer, tawery, thawer, toothdrawer, ultrawealthy, unawed, unchawed,
unclawed, underdrawers, underjawed, unflawed, unlawed, unoutlawed, unpawed,
unsawed, untawed, unthawed, wickawee, wiredrawer, withdrawer, wittawer

not just:

awe, awearied, aweary, aweather, aweband, awedness, awee, aweek, aweel,
aweigh, awesome, awesomely, awesomeness, awest, aweto

Making this usable relies on writing a front-end function to sort the results into those which start with the typed characters, and those which merely contain them. and displaying the results segmented accordingly. Also it will look a lot better if the characters the person typed were hightlighted in the list of word suggestions.

Note: you will need to update your test for the number of results returned by the ac.findWords method to reflect the wider search...