Thank you for taking the time to complete our short technical test. The test is composed of two sections. The first is a short coding test, we ask you don't spend anymore than 4 hours on this section. The second is a few technical questions for you to answer.
Sparkol has an blog that discusses audience engagement. The blog also has an RSS feed which can be used to follow the blog so you never miss a post.
The feed address is http://www.sparkol.com/engage/feed/, and requires no authentication.
The task is to create an application that displays the articles in reverse-chronological order, with the title, date posted, and the description/summary. The user should be able to open the article in the default web browser to read.
You can create the application for either iOS or Android, using any of the following technologies:
- Native Android SDK (Java)
- Native iOS (Objective-C / Swift)
- Xamarin iOS / Xamarin Android
- Please complete the user stories below
- The solution should compile in a single step, provide a README.md with an explanation of the step and any other relevant information about the project.
- Feel free to use any frameworks, sdks, packages or libraries that you wish.
As a user, I can view a list of blog posts sorted in reverse-chronological order, so that I can know what blog posts are available to read.
As a user, I would like to be able to open a chosen blog article in my default browser, so that I can read the article.
- The blog posts displayed must be the same as the engage blog website found at
http://www.sparkol.com/engage/, which is where the rss feed is from. - For each blog post the following should be displayed: name, initial posting date and description.
Please answer the following questions in a markdown file called answers-to-question.md.
- How long did you spend on the test?
- If you had more time, would you add anything to your solution?
- If you could add one product feature spec, what would it be? You should explain why.
- What were the reasons for using your chosen technology and platform? Is there another technology you think would better fit the specification?
- Did you use any version control for this project? If so, which system did you use? If not, why not?
To reduce the chances of bouncing / size restricted emails, we would like you to upload your submission to a shared Google Drive folder. To gain access to this, email your agent or the Sparkol staff member that asked you to complete the test.
Please submit a single .zip file with the naming format of firstname-lastname.zip.