Greetings

Hi! Congratulations on progressing to the next stage of our interview process, we are glad you are here and cannot wait to see what you can do. We want to give you an idea of the kind of things you might be expected to do as a Software Developer here at Target Information Systems.

Welcome to GradRole

Welcome to GradRole our exciting new app. We have used JHipster to create this starting point for you. This application is a Spring Boot backend and a Vue.js frontend with a PostgreSQL Database.

The application has a concept of users and HTTP Session Authentication so there is a secure area of the site you can log into. If and when you get the app up and running on your local machine you will see that quite a bit of work has already been done for you but we need your help to add in few new changes.

Quick Start

You will need to be running Java version v12, Node v14 and PostgreSQL v9. Other versions may work but if you are getting errors check your versions match.

Installing and launching the application can be quite challenging, but don't lose heart. Consider taking note of any difficulties you encounter and the solutions you come up with. Sharing your experience in overcoming these obstacles can be valuable and interesting for us to hear.

1. Install Java, Git, Node.js and PostgreSQL.
2. Install JHipster npm install -g generator-jhipster@beta (we are using the beta because it supports Vue.js out of the box)
3. Create a GitHub account if you don't already have one
4. Fork the application
5. Create a local clone of your fork
6. Create a new role and database in PostgreSQL called gradrole
7. Run your Spring Boot application using ./mvnw
8. In a separate terminal window start the frontend applications using npm start
9. Finally we recommend opening the project in an IDE such as IntelliJIDEA - this guide will help you configure it

If you are using Intellij IDEA then we recommend that you enable "hot-restart" with Spring Boot devtools. This is a must-have feature, as it makes your application updated on the fly as and when you make changes.

If all of the above has gone well and you can access your application in your local web browser then well done. Its not always easy to get started with a new application and often documentation isn't great. Sometimes it's not always clear and this is where your problem solving skills will come into play!

One of things you will be expected to do is get up and running with applications fast. We have many applications at Target and having the ability to set them up is important as it means we can focus on delivering value to our customers.

Now lets get to work!

New Requirements

Before this part it might be work reading through some of the JHipster docs such as JHipster in a few minues and JHipster core tasks and JHipster in development. Here are some links which may come in handy but you may have to find some answers yourself - https://www.jhipster.tech/video-tutorial/, https://www.jhipster.tech/creating-an-entity/, https://www.jhipster.tech/development/, https://www.jhipster.tech/development/#database-updates.

The client has requested a few changes to this application. Have a go at implementing the following requirements:

• First of all the client really doesn't like the "Welcome, Java Hipster!" can we change this to something more fitting?
• Can we also remove the section around "if you have any questions on JHipster".
• It would be nice if there was an easier way to login. Perhaps the "Sign In" link could be a button?
• Currently users within the system have a first name and a last name it would be good if users could also have a middle name and job role.
• Slightly tricker now we need to know data of birth for the users. Could we have the ability to update users date of birth?
• In a similar way we have users it would be good if we could have a concept of Student within the system. It would be really good if we could Create, Read Update Delete (CRUD) Students. We need to know the name, email, dob, course they are studying.

Have a go at the above challenges. Try using git to commit your code and push back into your GitHub repository. When you are happy open a pull request so we can review your code. Prefix your pull request with your name so we know who it is from.

Extras

If you are wanting to delve a little deeper why not try adding some of your own features or ideas or try the following additional extras, again submitting any code changes as a pull request.

• Write a test
• Try using Docker and Docker compose to build an image of your application and run it inside a container
• Try installing minikube locally and deploy to your local Kubernetes cluster. See Deploying to Kubernetes for more information.

If you have any questions don't hesitate to ask. The README continues below with other useful information.

Thanks for applying and Good Luck!

gradrole

This application was generated using JHipster 7.0.0-beta.1, you can find documentation and help at https://www.jhipster.tech/documentation-archive/v7.0.0-beta.1.

Development

Before you can build this project, you must install and configure the following dependencies on your machine:

1. Node.js: We use Node to run a development web server and build the project. Depending on your system, you can install Node either from source or as a pre-packaged bundle.

After installing Node, you should be able to run the following command to install development tools. You will only need to run this command when dependencies change in package.json.

npm install

We use npm scripts and Webpack as our build system.

Run the following commands in two separate terminals to create a blissful development experience where your browser auto-refreshes when files change on your hard drive.

./mvnw
npm start

Npm is also used to manage CSS and JavaScript dependencies used in this application. You can upgrade dependencies by specifying a newer version in package.json. You can also run npm update and npm install to manage dependencies. Add the help flag on any command to see how you can use it. For example, npm help update.

The npm run command will list all of the scripts available to run for this project.

PWA Support

JHipster ships with PWA (Progressive Web App) support, and it's turned off by default. One of the main components of a PWA is a service worker.

The service worker initialization code is commented out by default. To enable it, uncomment the following code in src/main/webapp/index.html:

<script>
  if ('serviceWorker' in navigator) {
    navigator.serviceWorker.register('./service-worker.js').then(function () {
      console.log('Service Worker Registered');
    });
  }
</script>

Note: Workbox powers JHipster's service worker. It dynamically generates the service-worker.js file.

Managing dependencies

For example, to add Leaflet library as a runtime dependency of your application, you would run following command:

npm install --save --save-exact leaflet

To benefit from TypeScript type definitions from DefinitelyTyped repository in development, you would run following command:

npm install --save-dev --save-exact @types/leaflet

Then you would import the JS and CSS files specified in library's installation instructions so that Webpack knows about them: Note: There are still a few other things remaining to do for Leaflet that we won't detail here.

For further instructions on how to develop with JHipster, have a look at Using JHipster in development.

Building for production

Packaging as jar

To build the final jar and optimize the gradrole application for production, run:

./mvnw -Pprod clean verify

This will concatenate and minify the client CSS and JavaScript files. It will also modify index.html so it references these new files. To ensure everything worked, run:

java -jar target/*.jar

Then navigate to http://localhost:8080 in your browser.

Refer to Using JHipster in production for more details.

Packaging as war

To package your application as a war in order to deploy it to an application server, run:

./mvnw -Pprod,war clean verify

Testing

To launch your application's tests, run:

./mvnw verify

Client tests

Unit tests are run by Jest. They're located in src/test/javascript/ and can be run with:

npm test

For more information, refer to the Running tests page.

Code quality

Sonar is used to analyse code quality. You can start a local Sonar server (accessible on http://localhost:9001) with:

docker-compose -f src/main/docker/sonar.yml up -d

Note: we have turned off authentication in src/main/docker/sonar.yml for out of the box experience while trying out SonarQube, for real use cases turn it back on.

You can run a Sonar analysis with using the sonar-scanner or by using the maven plugin.

Then, run a Sonar analysis:

./mvnw -Pprod clean verify sonar:sonar

If you need to re-run the Sonar phase, please be sure to specify at least the initialize phase since Sonar properties are loaded from the sonar-project.properties file.

./mvnw initialize sonar:sonar

For more information, refer to the Code quality page.

Using Docker to simplify development (optional)

You can use Docker to improve your JHipster development experience. A number of docker-compose configuration are available in the src/main/docker folder to launch required third party services.

For example, to start a postgresql database in a docker container, run:

docker-compose -f src/main/docker/postgresql.yml up -d

To stop it and remove the container, run:

docker-compose -f src/main/docker/postgresql.yml down

You can also fully dockerize your application and all the services that it depends on. To achieve this, first build a docker image of your app by running:

./mvnw -Pprod verify jib:dockerBuild

Then run:

docker-compose -f src/main/docker/app.yml up -d

For more information refer to Using Docker and Docker-Compose, this page also contains information on the docker-compose sub-generator (jhipster docker-compose), which is able to generate docker configurations for one or several JHipster applications.

Continuous Integration (optional)

To configure CI for your project, run the ci-cd sub-generator (jhipster ci-cd), this will let you generate configuration files for a number of Continuous Integration systems. Consult the Setting up Continuous Integration page for more information.