Simple search tool that performs a name-based search on the data set provided by Star Wars API: https://swapi.dev/

The application shall allow to search for API objects based on name. As a result, it shall return all objects of that name as well as all objects related to them.

The app was created as an interview exercise.

The app is Spring Boot based.

Upon start, the application collects all API data and stores them in an index.

Aditionally, it exposes a search services at /starwars. This service allows to search for API objects by name (or title in case of films).

• /starwars?term=Tatooine returns an array of URLs related to that name.
• /starwars?term=Tatooine,R2-D2 returns an array of URLs related either to Tatooine (the planet) or R2-D2 the robot. It is possible to combine names of different object in a comma-separated list.

Example response (/starwars?term=R2-D2):

`{"searchTerm":"R2-D2","searchResults":["https://swapi.dev/api/planets/8/","https://swapi.dev/api/people/3/","https://swapi.dev/api/films/4/","https://swapi.dev/api/films/3/","https://swapi.dev/api/films/1/","https://swapi.dev/api/films/6/","https://swapi.dev/api/films/2/","https://swapi.dev/api/films/5/","https://swapi.dev/api/species/2/"]}`

Maven is used to build the application. To run the application, checkout the code and run mvn spring-boot:run.

The application maintains an in-memory index of keywords to URLs of resources in the API. The index is populated once after the application starts.

The population is done by a "crawler" component (ApiCrawler), that uses http://swdev.api/api as it's start point and traverses all API resources referenced there. A 'RestTemplate' client is used to get the API resources, mapping classes in xalbrech.exercises.starwars.crawler.mapping are used to map the JSON resources to POJOs.

Maintains in-memory index as a multi-map and provides lookup (search) capability to of the search.

xalbrecht.exercises.starwars.StarWarsSearchApp. Defines beans used in the application, performs the indexing on start-up and provides main method (calls Spring Boot).

The application is a simple prototype and a lot would still need to be done to make it production-like code.

• The code of mapping classes in the crawler (xalbrech.exercises.starwars.crawler.mapping) seems to be an overkill for a search - it seems the search is too tightly coupled to the API data structures. Other variants to implement this (e.g. some use of JsonPath) might be more suitable for such task.
• SearchIndex class is used accross the application, including the crawler code, though the crawler only needs a single piece of it's functionality (adding a record). This should be hidden behind an interface the crawler'd use instead of SearchIndex class.
• Access to search index map is not synchronized in any way. This is OK for now as the index is only populated at the start, but for a real use, some synchronization might be necesary.
• Improve test coverage
• Javadocs