Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live. - Martin Golding
Category: FCC Algorithm Challenges
Create a Request Header Parser Microservice in Node.js
This time, we are going to be creating a request header parser microservice in Node.js. Keep in mind that I’ll be using a set-up similar to that used by the previous two tutorials; for those who have not read them, that means that we’ll be using Express, and code our app using ECMAScript 6 thanks to Babel.
Feel free to go though the creation of a simple Express app post, as well as the set-up for using ECMAScript 6 within your node app.
Use ECMAScript 6 in Node.js with Babel
ECMAScript 6 is a great step for JavaScript. It provides some invaluable tools that make developing new code a bliss. If you want to learn about the features that ECMAScript 6 (also known as ECMAScript 2015, ES6 or ES2015), take a look at this two part series:
Unfortunately, Node.js will not let you use ES6 features out of the box. It does provide a way of using some of the ECMAScript 6 features, but not the whole thing. That’s what we are here to fix.
Create a Timestamp microservice with Node.js
This time around, we are going to be coding our own timestamp microservice using Node.js, and then, deploy it to Heroku. It’s going to be a very simple service that will return the unix time and natural date for the received input. Our API should be able to receive and properly handle the following two formats:
- A unix timestamp is a metric used to track time by displaying the miliseconds (sometimes seconds) that have passed since January 1st, 1970 at 00:00:00 UTC. For a quick test, you can get the unix timestamp for right now, by going into the Chrome DevTools console and typing the following: Date.now();
- The natural language date means that the date is passed in the following format: October 1, 2016.
Our timestamp microservice will accept any one of these two formats, and then, return a JSON object containing both formats. In other words:
- If the API receives this: 1477388794872, it will output the following JSON object:
{ "unix": 1477388794872, "natural": "October 25, 2016" } - Receiving “October 25, 2016” will output the same exact JSON object.
If no unix timestamp nor natural date is present, we’ll return null for both fields:
{
"unix": null,
"natural": null
}
FCC Bonfire Series 148: Caesars Cipher
FreeCodeCamp has recently added a few more challenges to the site. One of them is Caesars Cipher. This bonfire will have us write a function that mimics the ages old encryption method allegedly used by Romans back in the day.
It’s one of the simplest and oldest encryption methods, and works by replacing each character in a word or sentence with another one down the alphabet (based on a shift amount). For this exercise, we are told to use a shift of 13. Let me show you an example using the word dog and a shift of three.
- d -> e, f, g
- o -> p, q, r
- g -> h, i, j
StartJS 