fruit-picker

Fruit Picker

Welcome to Fruit Picker on Exercism's JavaScript Track. If you need help running the tests or submitting your code, check out HELP.md. If you get stuck on the exercise, check out HINTS.md, but try and solve it without using those first :)

Introduction

Callbacks are functions which are passed as arguments to another function. This is often done to control the order of execution in an asynchronous context. Writing a callback function is no different from writing a function, but the callback function's arguments must match the signature required by the calling function.

const squareLength = 5;

// Caller function takes a callback function
function applyToSquare(callback) {
  callback(squareLength);
}

// Callback must expect the possible argument from the calling function
function areaOfSquare(number) {
  return number * number;
}

applyToSquare(areaOfSquare); // => 25

You may also write callbacks as a function expression:

applyToSquare(function squarePerimeter(side) {
  return side * 4;
});

Or an anonymous inline arrow function expression:

applyToSquare((side) => side * 4);

// The argument "(side) => side * 4" is the callback

Instructions

You are creating a new online portal for your patrons to order their fruit fresh from the grocer. The grocer has an API that you can use to see if they have the inventory desired by your customers. You need to create a small library of functions for interacting with the grocer's API.

1. Check if the grocer's service is online

The grocer's application programming interface [API] provides a function to check if their service is online called checkStatus. Use the grocer's function to finish the implementation of your isServiceOnline function. The checkStatus function takes a callback function to receive the status from the API.

• if the status is 'ONLINE', return true
• if the status is 'OFFLINE', return false

isServiceOnline();
// => true or false

2. See if the grocer has some fruit

The grocer's API provides a function to query their inventory called checkInventory. It receives two arguments: a query, and a callback function.

The query takes the form of an object:

const query = {
  variety: string,
  quantity: number,
};

For your pickFruit function, you have decided to generalize it and just pass along a callback. So using the arguments variety and quantity finish the function to call the checkInventory API.

function action(err, data) {
  // logic
}

pickFruit('pineapple', 20, action);
// calls the checkInventory function with the query and passing along the `action` callback function

3. Create a callback to buy fruit if the inventory is available

Finish the purchaseInventoryIfAvailable callback function to be used with the grocer's checkInventory API function. The API function expects callback functions to accept two arguments, err and isAvailable. If an error occurs when checking the inventory, a string is returned to err. If there is no error, the value is null. isAvailable is a boolean value, but if there is an error it is undefined.

To finish purchaseInventoryIfAvailable, throw a new error if err is not null. Otherwise, return 'PURCHASE' if isAvailable is true or 'NOOP' if false.

purchaseInventoryIfAvailable('Server Offline', undefined);
// => Throws new error "Server Offline"

purchaseInventoryIfAvailable(null, true);
// => 'PURCHASE'

purchaseInventoryIfAvailable(null, false);
// => 'NOOP'

4. Put it all together

You notice that you're using pickFruit and purchaseInventoryIfAvailable so you decide to DRY up your code by extracting the code into a separate function called pickAndPurchaseFruit. Reuse pickFruit and purchaseInventoryIfAvailable to finish this function.

pickAndPurchaseFruit('Red Delicious Apples', 42);
// 'PURCHASE' if available or 'NOOP' if not available

Source

Created by

• @neenjaw

Contributed to by

• @SleeplessByte