/// <summary>
/// The solution to question 2 uses the solution to question 1: The idea here is that we can
/// pass more than one reader objects to this task and just one output object. The readers can then
/// run in parallel, meaning that they can read streams of characters, process them, form words and
/// create outputs, all in parallel. This happens by utiliasing the solution to question 1 and
/// calling the necessary methods in an asynchronous way.
///
/// Additionally a mechanism has been added to the solution of question 1 for delaying the creation
/// of outputs for specified periods of times, i.e. creating outputs in specific intervals, as
/// per the requirements for the solution to question 2.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="readers">An array of objects of a class that implements the ICharacterReader interface,
/// which provides a method for reading the next character of a character stream.</param>
/// <param name="output">An object of a class that implements the IOutputResult interface, which allows to
/// format an output according to specific requirements.</param>
/// <returns>A task that calls the method RunQuestionOne one or more times asynchronously.</returns>
public Task RunQuestionTwo(ICharacterReader[] readers, IOutputResult output)
{
// Reset the following variable to false in order to de-activate the mechanism that produces
// an output in specified intervals, e.g. 10 seconds.
wasCallInitiatedInQuestionTwo = true;
return(Task.Run(async() =>
{
// Create a timer that will wait for this task to complete.
Task mainTimer = DelayTimerAsync(questionTwoTimeout);
// Create an array of tasks that has the same length with the array of readers
// that is passed as a parameter to this method.
Task[] tasks = new Task[readers.Length];
// Create a task per reader in order to be able to call the solution for
// question one asynchronously per reader.
for (int index = 0; index < readers.Length; index++)
{
tasks[index] = RunQuestionOneAsync(readers[index], output);
}
// Create an output every 10 seconds (or any other given interval).
CreateIntervalOutputs(wordDictionary, output);
// Await the Question One tasks to complete.
for (int index = 0; index < readers.Length; index++)
{
await tasks[index];
}
// Await the main timer to complete.
await mainTimer;
}));
}
public async Task RunQuestionOne(ICharacterReader reader, IOutputResult output)
{
var dt = new DeveloperTest();
await dt.ProcessReaderAsync(reader);
await dt.Print(output);
}
public void RunQuestionOne(ICharacterReader reader, IOutputResult output)
{
// var text = "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times".ToLower();
var text = reader.ToString();
var match = Regex.Match(text, "\\w+");
Dictionary <string, int> freq = new Dictionary <string, int>();
while (match.Success)
{
string word = match.Value;
if (freq.ContainsKey(word))
{
freq[word]++;
}
else
{
freq.Add(word, 1);
}
match = match.NextMatch();
}
Console.WriteLine("Rank Word Frequency Details");
int rank = 1;
foreach (var elem in freq.OrderByDescending(a => a.Value).Take(10))
{
Console.WriteLine("{0,2} {1,-4} {2,5}", rank++, elem.Key, elem.Value);
output.AddResult(elem.ToString());
}
}
public void RunQuestionTwo(ICharacterReader[] readers, IOutputResult output)
{
var wordCount = new Dictionary <string, int>();
// string line = "a list of word frequencies ordered by word count and then alphabetically";
string line = readers.ToString();
while ((line != null))
{
var words = line.Split(separators, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);
foreach (var word in words)
{
if (wordCount.ContainsKey(word))
{
wordCount[word] = wordCount[word] + 1;
}
else
{
wordCount.Add(word, 1);
output.AddResult(wordCount.ToString());
}
}
}
}
public void RunQuestionOne(ICharacterReader reader, IOutputResult output)
{
var wordCount = new Dictionary <string, int>();
CalculateWords(reader, wordCount);
SendWordsOrdered(output, wordCount);
}
/// <summary>
/// This is the answer to question 1.
///
/// ASSUMPTIONS:
/// ============
///
/// 1. The text read by the reader only contains words of the English language, so in this
/// case there is no provision for words of other languages written in different alphabets,
/// or for numerals, etc. Please also see the assumptions listed in class CharExtensions.cs
/// for more details.
///
/// 2. The second assumption, and in accordance to assumption 1 above, is that when it comes
/// to deciding if a character is part of a word or not, we assume that we are always dealing
/// with characters of the English alphabet, both lower case and capitals, and with any special
/// symbols that can be accepted as part of an English word, i.e. hyphen. In this case, there
/// is no provision for characters of different alphabets, numerals, etc.
///
/// 3. Another assumption is that it is preferable to deal with the input character stream
/// dynamically, on the fly, instead of reading the whole stream and storing it in a local
/// variable prior to processing it. This, for example, could help in situations of extremely
/// long streams (such as when reading a character stream from a large file) that would require
/// the use of extensive amounts of in-memory storage prior to processing.
///
/// LOGIC:
/// ======
///
/// An instance of this class (DeveloperTestImplementationAsync) is created elsewhere in the code
/// (for example in a unit test such as StandardTestAsync.TestQuestionOneAsync()). This method
/// can also be called asynchronously as part of the solution of question 2. When it is called
/// two objects are passed into it as dependencies using the method dependency injection pattern,
/// the first one is a reader object, for example an instance of the SimpleCharacterReader or the
/// SlowCharacterReader class, they both implement the ICharacterReader interface, and the second
/// one is an output object, which is an instance of the Question1TestOutput class that implements
/// the IOutputResult interface.
///
/// The purpose of this method is to use these two objects in order to read a character stream,
/// dynamically process the character stream in order to separate it into English words, then order
/// those words by frequency and then alphabetically, and finally create an appropriate output in
/// the required output format that will be tested by the relevant unit test mentioned above for its
/// correctness (i.e. the words that it contains, the frequency of appearence of each word in the character
/// stream, and whether these words have been ordered by frequency and alphabetically as required).
///
/// Reading the character stream: In order to successfully read the character stream this method uses
/// a simple do-while loop that in each iteration reads a new character, then process the character
/// in order to make a decision if it should be accepted as part of an English word or not, and
/// consequently adds the character in the next word or rejects it.
///
/// EndOfStreamException: The algorithm then deals with the EndOfStreamException, thrown by the reader
/// when the end of the character stream has been reached, by making sure in the finally sub-block of the
/// try-catch-finally block that the very last word read is captured correctly and stored in the dictionary in the
/// same way as with all the previous words.
///
/// Finally, this method makes sure that the dictionary of words and word frequences is sorted
/// according to the requirements, i.e. first by word frequency and then alphabetically, and then creates
/// the desired output.
///
/// Parts of this algorithm, such as processing a character, forming a word, sorting the dictionary, and
/// creating the required output, have been implemented as separate methods in order to modularise and
/// declutter the main algorithm. The purpose here is to improve its readibity and at the same time to
/// demonstrate how to create methods for reoccurring tasks and functions, for improved reusability,
/// and for making it more clear where and how the state of certain objects is changed (instead of changing the
/// state of these objects all over the place). I have chosen to pass parameters back and forth to these
/// methods (even if in some cases they are dealing with the member variables that are already available
/// to them) in order to show that we could easily move them out of this class altogether, maybe into some
/// sort of helper class where they could be re-used by other classes of a hypothetical bigger program.
/// For simplicity I have left these methods in this class.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="reader">An object of a class that implements the ICharacterReader interface, which provides
/// a method for reading the next character of a character stream.</param>
/// <param name="output">An object of a class that implements the IOutputResult interface, which allows to
/// format an output according to specified requirements.</param>
public Task RunQuestionOne(ICharacterReader reader, IOutputResult output)
{
// This whole task can run asynchronously. This is useful when we need to run several readers
// in parallel and we do not want to wait for the synchronous completion of each reader before
// starting the next one.
return(Task.Run(async() =>
{
// A string variable that helps us form the next word from the input character stream.
string nextWord = string.Empty;
using (reader)
{
try
{
// This is the main loop that reads a stream of characters, one by one,
// processes the characters according to the assumptions made above, forms
// English words and stores these words to a dictionary collection,
// keeping also track of how often each of these words appear in the input
// stream (word frequency).
do
{
ProcessNextChar(reader.GetNextChar(), ref nextWord, wordDictionary);
} while (true);
}
catch (EndOfStreamException e)
{
// Normally an error message, like the one below, would be logged in a log file or
// log database, by being passed to an appropriate method of a dedicated logger object.
// As this is out of the scope of this exercise, for now I am just imitating
// logging the error message by just displaying the error message to the console.
Console.WriteLine($"Error reading stream: {e.GetType().Name}.");
}
finally
{
// Here we make sure that we do not miss out the very last word of the input stream
// because of the EndOfStreamException thrown by the GetNextChar() method of the reader.
if (nextWord != string.Empty)
{
AddStringToDictionary(wordDictionary, nextWord);
}
}
// Sort the dictionary by word frequency and then alphabetically and then
// create the required output. The delay period is part of the mechanism that
// allows to create an output on specified intervals and it is used only for
// question two. The default value is zero, meaning an immediate creation of the output.
if (!wasCallInitiatedInQuestionTwo)
{
CreateOutputAsync(SortDictionary(wordDictionary), output, defaultDelayPeriod);
}
// Allow some time for the completion of this task before exiting.
await DelayTimerAsync(questionOneTimeout);
}
}));
}
private void SendWordsOrdered(IOutputResult output, Dictionary <string, int> wordCount)
{
lock (_padlock)
{
foreach (var item in wordCount.OrderBy(o => o.Key).OrderByDescending(o => o.Value))
{
output.AddResult(item.Key + " - " + item.Value);
}
}
}
public static string GetBriefSummary(this IOutputResult result)
{
var operationsCount = result.GetOperationResults().Count(x => !(x is FillingOperationResult));
var exceptions = result.GetExceptions().ToList();
return(exceptions.Count == 0
? $"{operationsCount} {(operationsCount > 1 ? "operations" : "operation")} run"
: exceptions.Count == 1
? exceptions.Single().Name
: $"exceptions.Count {(exceptions.Count > 1 ? "exceptions" : "exception")} thrown");
}
public Task Print(IOutputResult output)
{
foreach (var keyValuePair in _dictionary.Dictionary
.OrderByDescending(x => x.Value)
.ThenBy(x => x.Key))
{
{
output.AddResult($"{keyValuePair.Key} - {keyValuePair.Value}");
}
}
return(Task.FromResult(0));
}
public static string GetDetailedSummary(this IOutputResult result, ISymbolProvider symbolProvider = null, bool includeExceptions = true)
{
symbolProvider = symbolProvider ?? new DefaultSymbolProvider();
var builder = new StringBuilder();
AppendOperations(result.GetOperationResults(), builder, symbolProvider);
AppendOutput(result.OutputEntries, builder, symbolProvider);
if (includeExceptions)
{
AppendExceptions(result.GetExceptions(), builder);
}
return(builder.ToString());
}
private void Finished(IOutputResult result)
{
var task = _taskDictionary[result.Identity];
// Don't process if task represents an assembly suite.
if (!task.IsMeaningfulTask)
{
return;
}
_server.TaskOutput(task, result.GetDetailedSummary(includeExceptions: false), TaskOutputType.STDOUT);
_server.TaskException(task, result.GetExceptions().ToList().Select(x => x.ToTaskException()).ToArray());
_server.TaskFinished(task, result.GetBriefSummary(), result.GetTaskResult());
}
/// <summary>
/// Mechanism for creating an output in given intervals (e.g. 10 seconds) as per requirements.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="dictionary">The collection that contains the data for the output.</param>
/// <param name="output">The output where the data will be added.</param>
/// <param name="delayInterval">The interval that specifies how often to create an output.</param>
private void CreateIntervalOutputs(IDictionary <string, int> dictionary, IOutputResult output, int delayInterval = defaultDelayInterval)
{
if (wasCallInitiatedInQuestionTwo)
{
int delayPeriod = delayInterval;
for (int i = 0; i < questionTwoTimeout / delayInterval; i++)
{
CreateOutputAsync(SortDictionary(wordDictionary), output, delayPeriod);
delayPeriod += delayInterval;
}
}
}
public async Task RunQuestionTwo(ICharacterReader[] readers, IOutputResult output)
{
var dt = new DeveloperTest();
var tasks = readers.Select(dt.ProcessReaderAsync).ToList();
var printCounterTask = new Task(() => dt.DelayedPrint(output));
printCounterTask.Start();
Task.WhenAll(tasks).ContinueWith(x => dt.Print(output).ContinueWith(_ =>
{
dt.Finished = true;
})).Wait();
printCounterTask.Wait();
}
public void RunQuestionTwo(ICharacterReader[] readers, IOutputResult output)
{
var wordCount = new Dictionary <string, int>();
var timer = new Timer(
e => SendWordsOrdered(output, wordCount),
null,
TimeSpan.Zero,
TimeSpan.FromSeconds(10));
Parallel.ForEach(readers, reader =>
{
CalculateWords(reader, wordCount);
});
timer.Dispose();
SendWordsOrdered(output, wordCount);
}
public async Task DelayedPrint(IOutputResult output)
{
while (true)
{
if (!Finished)
{
//every 10 seconds should print.
//at least one print even if the execution is less than 10 seconds
//as this starts in paralel with the processing
Task.Delay(10 * 1000).Wait();
await Print(output);
}
else
{
#if DEBUG
Console.WriteLine("Finished with printing");
#endif
break;
}
}
}
/// <summary>
/// Creates an output in the desirable format.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="pairs">An ordered and enumerable collection of key/value pairs, in this case string/int pairs.</param>
/// <param name="output">An object of a class that implements the IOutputResult interface.</param>
private void CreateOutput(IOrderedEnumerable <KeyValuePair <string, int> > pairs, IOutputResult output)
{
foreach (var pair in pairs)
{
output.AddResult($"{pair.Key} - {pair.Value.ToString()}");
}
}
/// <summary>
/// This is the answer to question 1.
///
/// ASSUMPTIONS:
/// ============
///
/// 1. The text read by the reader only contains words of the English language, so in this
/// case there is no provision for words of other languages written in different alphabets,
/// or for numericals, etc. Please also see the assumptions listed in class CharExtensions.cs
/// for more details.
///
/// 2. The second assumption, and in accordance to assumption 1 above, is that when it comes
/// to deciding if a character is part of a word or not, we assume that we are always dealing
/// with characters of the English alphabet, both lower case and capitals. So, there is no
/// provision for characters of different alphabets, numericals, etc.
///
/// 3. Another assumption is that it is preferable to deal with the input character stream
/// dynamically, on the fly, instead of reading the whole stream and storing it in a local
/// variable first before processing it. This, for example, could help in situations of extremely
/// long streams (for example reading a character stream from a file) that would require the use
/// of extensive amounts of in-memory storage prior to processing.
///
/// LOGIC:
/// ======
///
/// An instance of this class (DeveloperTestImplementation) is created elsewhere in the code
/// (specifically in the unit test: StandardTest.TestQuestionOne()). At that moment two objects
/// are passed to this method as dependencies using the method dependency injection pattern,
/// the first one is a reader object, which is an instance of the SimpleCharacterReader class that
/// implements the ICharacterReader interface, and the second one is an output object, which is an
/// instance of the Question1TestOutput class that implements the IOutputResult interface.
///
/// The purpose of this method is to use these two objects in order to read a character stream,
/// dynamically process the character stream in order to separate it into English words, then order
/// those words by frequency and then alphabetically, and finally create an appropriate output in
/// the required output format that will be tested by the relevant unit test mentioned above for its
/// correctness (i.e. the words that contains, the frequency that each word appears in the character
/// stream, and whether these words have been ordered by frequency and alphabetically as required).
///
/// Reading the character stream: In order to successfully read the character stream this method uses
/// a simple do-while loop that in each iteration reads a new character, then decides if the character
/// is a letter of the English alphabet or not (using the extension method IsLetter()) and accordingly
/// either adds the character to the next word if it is indeed a letter or adds the word to a dictionary
/// of words if the last read character is a white space, new line character, a comma, etc, i.e. anything
/// other than a letter. When a word is added to the dictionary the algorithm makes sure that the
/// string that holds the next word is initialised to an empty string in order to be able to hold the
/// next word successfully. The algorithm then deals with the EndOfStreamException raised by the reader
/// by making sure in the finally part of the try-catch-finally block that the very last word read is not
/// lost, but stored in the dictionary in the same way with all the previous words.
///
/// The last line of this method makes sure that the dictionary of words and word frequences is sorted
/// according to the requirements, i.e. first by word frequency and then alphabetically, and then creates
/// the desired output. These two tasks, sorting the dictionary and creating the required output, have
/// been implemented in separate private method in order to declutter the main algorithm, improve its
/// readibity, and demonstrate how to create methods for reoccurring tasks and functions, improving reusability,
/// and making it more clear where and how we change the state of certain objects (instead of changing the
/// state of objects all over the place). For example we can see that the method AddStringToDictionary(...)
/// is called twice, once from inside the main do-while loop and then again from the finally sub-block of the
/// try-catch-finally block.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="reader">An object of a class that implements the ICharacterReader interface, which provides
/// a method for reading the next character of a character stream.</param>
/// <param name="output">An object of a class that implements the IOutputResult interface, which allows to
/// format an output according to specific requirements.</param>
public void RunQuestionOne(ICharacterReader reader, IOutputResult output)
{
// A dictionary collection that holds words as strings and the frequency of their appearence as integers.
IDictionary <string, int> wordDictionary = new Dictionary <string, int>();
// A string variable that helps us form the next word from the input character stream.
string nextWord = string.Empty;
using (reader)
{
try
{
// This is the main loop that reads a stream of characters, one by one,
// splits the stream into English words, according to the assumptions
// made above, and then stores the words into a dictionary collection
// keeping also track of how often each word appears in the input stream
// (word frequency).
do
{
// Read the next character from the stream of characters.
char nextChar = reader.GetNextChar();
// As long as the next character is a letter keep adding it to the next word,
// as soon as you have encountered a word's end (indicated by a whitespace
// character, a symbol such as a comma or a full stop, a new line character or
// something similar) add the word to the dictionary and reset the variable
// in order to be used to form the next word from scratch.
if (nextChar.IsLetter())
{
nextWord += nextChar.ToString().ToLower();
}
else
{
if (nextWord != string.Empty)
{
AddStringToDictionary(wordDictionary, nextWord);
nextWord = string.Empty;
}
}
} while (true);
}
catch (EndOfStreamException e)
{
// Normally an error message, like the one below, would be logged in a log file or
// log database, by being passed to an appropriate method of a dedicated logger object.
// As this is out of the scope of this exercise, for now I am just imitating the
// error message logging by just displaying the error message to the console.
Console.WriteLine($"Error reading stream: {e.GetType().Name}.");
}
finally
{
// Here we make sure that we do not miss the very last word of the input stream
// because of the EndOfStreamException thrown by the GetNextChar() method of the reader.
if (nextWord != string.Empty)
{
AddStringToDictionary(wordDictionary, nextWord);
}
}
// Sort the dictionary by word frequency and then alphabetically and then
// create the required output.
CreateOutput(SortDictionary(wordDictionary), output);
}
}
/// <summary>
/// Task that allows us to await the completion of the solution to question 1 without
/// blocking the execution of the rest of the program.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="reader">An object of a class that implements the ICharacterReader interface, which provides
/// a method for reading the next character of a character stream.</param>
/// <param name="output">An object of a class that implements the IOutputResult interface, which allows to
/// format an output according to specific requirements.</param>
/// <returns>When the solution to Question 1 is complete the task returns.</returns>
private async Task RunQuestionOneAsync(ICharacterReader reader, IOutputResult output)
{
await RunQuestionOne(reader, output);
}
public static IEnumerable <IExceptionDescriptor> GetExceptions(this IOutputResult result)
{
return(result.GetOperationResults().Select(x => x.Exception).WhereNotNull());
}
/// <summary>
/// A task that allows the creation of an output in the required format.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="pairs">An ordered and enumerable collection of key/value pairs, in this case string/int pairs,
/// containing the data that will be used for the creation of the output.</param>
/// <param name="output">An object of a class that implements the IOutputResult interface.</param>
/// <returns>The task that creates the output.</returns>
private Task CreateOutput(IOrderedEnumerable <KeyValuePair <string, int> > pairs, IOutputResult output)
{
return(Task.Run(() =>
{
// The following tow lines are only used in verbose mode.
if (verboseMode)
{
Console.WriteLine("Output:");
}
if (verboseMode)
{
Console.WriteLine("--------------------");
}
foreach (var pair in pairs)
{
output.AddResult($"{pair.Key} - {pair.Value.ToString()}");
}
// The following line is only used in verbose mode.
if (verboseMode)
{
Console.WriteLine("--------------------");
}
}));
}
/// <summary>
/// A method that allows to await the creation of an output.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="pairs">An ordered and enumerable collection of key/value pairs, in this case string/int pairs,
/// containing the data that will be used for the creation of the output.</param>
/// <param name="output">An object of a class that implements the IOutputResult interface.</param>
/// <param name="delayPeriod">The dealy period needed before the creation of the output.</param>
private async void CreateOutputAsync(IOrderedEnumerable <KeyValuePair <string, int> > pairs, IOutputResult output, int delayPeriod)
{
await DelayTimer(delayPeriod);
await CreateOutput(pairs, output);
}
public Task RunQuestionTwo(ICharacterReader[] readers, IOutputResult output)
{
throw new System.NotImplementedException();
}
public Startup(IReadFileService readFileService, IBlockProcessingService blockProcessingService, IOutputResult outputResult)
{
_readFileService = readFileService;
_blockProcessingService = blockProcessingService;
_outputResult = outputResult;
}
public static IEnumerable <IOperationResult> GetOperationResults(this IOutputResult result)
{
return(result is ITestResult
? ((ITestResult)result).OperationResults
: ((ISuiteResult)result).SetupResults.Concat(new FillingOperationResult()).Concat(((ISuiteResult)result).CleanupResults));
}
public Startup(IStringParserService stringParserService, ICharProcessingService charProcessingService, IOutputResult outputResult)
{
_stringParserService = stringParserService;
_charProcessingService = charProcessingService;
_outputResult = outputResult;
}
public Task RunQuestionOne(ICharacterReader reader, IOutputResult output)
{
throw new NotImplementedException();
}
public void RunQuestionTwo(ICharacterReader[] readers, IOutputResult output)
{
throw new NotImplementedException();
}
public Task RunQuestionTwo(ICharacterReader[] readers, IOutputResult output, CancellationToken cancellationToken)
{
throw new NotImplementedException();
}
