Reddit Top 50 posts client

This project was made for a coding challenge at Deviget. You can read the requirements here

This project was bootstrapped with Create React App, using the Redux and Redux Toolkit template.

Live version

You can see it in action here

Development process description

Here's a detail of the development process, the decisions I've made, the problems I ran into and how I solved them.

Requirements analysis

I first read the requirements, then I did a little research of the main topics (Reddit API, how to persist storage, etc.) and after that, I made a quick plan of the steps I would need to complete the project.

• Project bootstrap including Redux
• Components and layout
• Design redux store and actions with static data
• Implement async loading of posts
• Persist the store
• Animations
• Unit Tests
• Publish

Project bootstrap

Provided that it was a requirement the use of Redux, I decided to start the project with the create react app redux template, which includes by default Redux Toolkit and the React Testing Library.

I included material-ui framework mainly to make use of the Drawer component, following the video example that was provided.

Components and layout

The main idea was to be able to display some how the data on the screen, leaving the behaviour and graphic design for later.

Initial Redux store

Taking advantage of the included RTK, I created the store using their Slice concept.

Async loading of posts

RTK includes redux-thunk middleware by default, and provides a function called createAsyncThunk that abstracts the standard recommended approach for handling async request lifecycles.

Persisting store

I followed Dan Abramov's solution described in this egghead.io lesson that I found by Googling.

Animations

In the PostList component I embedded the list in a TransitionGroup component, which manages the children component list state, allowing the Slide component slide to the left before unmounting, according to the provided example video.

Unit tests

I put in some unit tests just to cover this aspect, but I have not been exhaustive.cra-template-redux includes React Testing Library, which I didn't use before, and took the opportunity to check it out.

Publishing

I decided to publish the application in GitHub Pages following this tutorial

Problems I faced

Here's a list of the problems that arose, or things that I underestimated:

• Design responsiveness took me longer than I expected.
  • Responsive Drawer component turned out not to be an actual component, but an example of how to solve the problem, embedding different layouts into Hidden components. I considered it too complex for something that should be simpler, but took me time to adjust it.
• Direct downloading images was impossible because Reddit does not send CORS headers
  • I tried different solutions, including putting the image into a canvas, and discovered this security implementation which I didn't know
  • I was trying to avoid the use of an external proxy, but I ended up using it just to get over it.
• Sliding out animation was not visible since the object is unmounted before the animation takes place.
  • I found insufficient or unclear the material ui documentation. It took me a couple of hours to find out that I needed to wrap the list with the TransitionGroup component to keep track of mounted and unmounted children.
• After watching the sample video, I don't get what the 'Pagination support' requirement stands for... I didn't see any pagination in the app, nor any other reference to it, so I only limit the top posts request to the first 50

---

Developing with CRA

Available Scripts

In the project directory, you can run:

yarn start

Runs the app in the development mode.
Open http://localhost:3000 to view it in the browser.

The page will reload if you make edits.
You will also see any lint errors in the console.

yarn test

Launches the test runner in the interactive watch mode.
See the section about running tests for more information.

yarn build

Builds the app for production to the build folder.
It correctly bundles React in production mode and optimizes the build for the best performance.

The build is minified and the filenames include the hashes.
Your app is ready to be deployed!

See the section about deployment for more information.