Backend AutoComplete

The Backend AutoComplete is a RESTful API that provides auto-complete suggestions for station names. It utilizes a Trie data structure for efficient search and supports special characters like umlauts (ä, ö, ü) and ß.

Features

• Auto-complete suggestions: Given a partial station name query, the API returns a list of suggested station names that match the query.
• Handling special characters: The API supports special characters like umlauts (ä, ö, ü) and ß in the station names, providing accurate suggestions.
• Performance: The Trie data structure used in the backend ensures fast and efficient search operations, allowing for quick response times even with a large dataset.

Technologies Used

• Node.js: The application is built using Node.js, a powerful JavaScript runtime environment.
• Express.js: Express.js is used as the web framework for handling HTTP requests and responses.
• TypeScript: The application is written in TypeScript, providing static typing and improved maintainability.
• Trie data structure: The Trie data structure is used to efficiently store and search for station names.
• Other Modular architectures/patterns: MVC and Dependency Injection.
• (and for sure there is more room for improvement)

Getting Started (Locally)

A quick start via docker-compose:

docker-compose up

The server should be available at http://localhost:3000.

NOTE: This setup may add a fraction of ms delay, particularly if you deploy the container on a cluster.

Alternative setup:

To build, test, and run the application, follow these steps:

1. Clone the repository: git clone <repository-url>
2. Install dependencies:

npm install

3. Build the application:

npm run build

4. Run the tests (optional):

npm run test

5. Start the application:

npm run dev

The server should be available at http://localhost:3000. Make sure to set up the necessary environment variables for the application, such as the port number and any configuration options specific to your environment. Refer to the .env file for the available options (discarded in .gitignore for demonstration purposes of its content).

API Endpoints

The API is versrioned and current version is 1.

Method	Endpoint	Description
GET	/api/v1/auto-complete/:query	Retrieves auto-complete suggestions for the given query

The query parameter represents the partial station name to search for.

Examples

• Request: GET /api/v1/auto-complete/altdoe Response:

  {
    "station_list": ["8011016 - BAD - Altdöbern"],
    "time_taken": "0.2 ms",
    "number_of_stations_found": "1"
  }

As you see here, the umlaut in the query parameter altdoe gets successfully resolved to altdö.