Mars Rover - ThoughtWorks Code Assignment

Hello ThoughtWorker!

Below are detailed instructions to run my application, as well as a brief explanation of my design and assumptions made.

Getting Started

The instructions below will get my Mars Rover application set up in your dev environment.

Prerequisites

• Ensure you have the latest version of node installed.
• This application was built using Node12.16.0.

Installing

First, clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/mikegyi/marsrover.git

Install the dependencies

npm install

You should now have all the necessary packages required to run the tests.

Running the tests

The JavaScript testing framework Jasmine will have been installed in the previous section.

To run the tests, simply use the following in your command line

jasmine

Desired test result

My design

• To move forward, the rover simply adds 1 to the x or y coordinate, dependent on the current heading
• To turn, the rover uses the current heading to move through the compass points either clockwise (R) or anti-clockwise (L)
• To execute multiple actions, the rover iterates over each action, applying each action sequentially
• To ensure the rovers move in order, a variable is assigned to each rovers position and the actions are applied one after another in the code

My assumptions

• The rover can only face 4 different compass directions - North (N) East (E) South (S) and West (W)
• The rover won't be instructed by its users to fall off the 5 x 5 grid
• The users won't instruct the rovers to crash into each other

My process

• I built the project up with a strict focus on TDD using Jasmine
• Firstly, I wrote a test for the most simple action 'M' and then wrote the logic to make the test go green
• Once I had the most simple action working, I continued to build out the other actions 'L' and 'R', using the same process - writing the tests first
• I then wrote a test for a sequence of actions and used a for..of statement to iterate over the string, applying each action sequentially
• Next, I wrote the test for the given test data input
• Afterwards I used the split() method to convert the data into an array
• Then I had to convert the strings into an object in order for the given test input to work with the logic
• Finally, I had to convert the resulting object back to a string to make sure the test went green

Built With

• JavaScript - The language used
• Jasmine - The testing framework used

Thanks for reading! 😀 👾