This is a simple mavel characters api.

Install Node.js on your machine.

1. Install dependencies

   npm install

2. copy /.env.example to /.env and update the .env file with your Marvel's api keys (MARVEL_PUBLIC_KEY & MARVEL_PRIVATE_KEY). you can get the Marvel's api keys from Marvel's Developers Site. The default port is set to 8080 but you can change it in the .env file

   PORT=8080
   
   MARVEL_PUBLIC_KEY=your-public-key
   MARVEL_PRIVATE_KEY=your-private-key
   

3. Build the project

   npm run build

4. Run the app

   npm run start

   Access the api docs on http://localhost:8080/docs

To run the tests

npm run test

In this project node-cache library was used to do an in-momory caching. Refer to character.service.ts file to see the code. Below are the steps taken to cache the results obtained from Marvel's API:

1. Get the last modified character & total number of characters in Marvels API using /characters endpoint with (orderBy: '-modified' and limit:1).
2. Compare the last_modified timestamp obtained in step 1 with the cached last_modified value.
   • If both values are equal, then serve the data from the cache
   • If not equal, then get the latest list from Marvel’s API then store the results in the cache and update the cached last_modified.

After we get the total number of records (poinit 1 above), we create an array of javascript promises. Each promise will have a limit of 100 records. So if the total number of characters on Marvel’s API is 1450, 15 promises will be created and run concurrently to get the data. After getting all the data we will filter the ids only cache then in memory.