For this coding challenge you'll build a simplified version of battleship. You'll have 3 ships that will be placed on a 10 by 10 grid which is the battleground. Each cell in the battleground is identified by its space on an x,y axis with [0,0] being the cell in the bottom left corner. Each ship is 1 cell wide and 3 cells long. On initial placement, each ship is oriented vertically. To initialize the playing field you'll receive a 2 dimensional array where each element in the array contains the x,y coordinates of each ship's topmost cell. So for example, if you receive this array [[0,3],[4,8],[6,6]] then your initial playing board will have ships that occupy the following cells:
[[0,3],[0,2],[0,1]], [[4,8],[4,7],[4,6]] and [[6,6],[6,5],[6,4]]
Your game interface will be a basic HTTP API. We want you to flesh out the provided BattleshipsController so that the create action accepts a 2-dimensional array that contains the topmost cell coordinates of ships to initialize the playing board. You'll then need to complete the update action to take x and y parameters and return the string "hit" if the coordinate lands on a ship. The update action should return the string "miss" if the coordinate does not land on a ship. If a ship has been hit on all 3 of its cells then the update action should return "sunk".
- This problem was built and tested with Ruby version 2.3.1
- You should have received an email with a repo url. Clone this repo
cdinto your local directory copygem install bundlerbundle install
All inputs are given as strings
To make things easier (and remove the need for persistent storage) the development and test environments have been modified to enable class caching. A memory store cache is also available. Feel free to use a class variable, cache or something else to maintain state between subsequent HTTP API calls. You can assume that only one agent is accessing the API.
Q. Say what?! You're suggesting we could use a class variable in a controller. Isn't that frowned upon?
A. We agree with you and in our production code we avoid maintaining state in the controller. However, if design decisions should be made in context, then we think it's ok to use a class variable for this exercise. We're more interested in other aspects of your solution. You don't have to use a class variable (some people do, and some people don't). We promise not to judge you for using a class variable if you don't judge us too harshly for having a problem that encourages it.
We want you to submit a solution you're proud of and we want you to be successful so here are some of the things we're looking for in a solution:
- A solution that is correct for various input values. We're big fans of writing tests to help us build quality software.
- A solution that shows good object oriented (or functional) programming principles but doesn't go overboard.
- A solution that shows familiarity with the language used.