Question

I was recently asked to submit a solution to a problem for a job.

Problem: Find a sub-string in a string.

Input: "Little star's deep dish pizza sure is fantastic."  
Search: "deep dish pizza"  
Output: "Little star's [[HIGHLIGHT]]deep dish pizza[[ENDHIGHLIGHT]] sure is fantastic."

Note that the highlighter doesn’t have to have the exact same result on this example, since you are defining what a good snippet is and return the the most relevant snippet with the query terms highlighted.

The most important requirement was to write it as I would write a production code.

My solution was not accepted. How could I have improved it? I know, I could have used:

1. Knuth–Morris–Pratt algorithm
2. Regex (could I?)

My QUESTION:

1. What do tech companies take into consideration when they review a code for a job. I submitted the code the same day, does that help in any way?

2. In one of the comments, it pointed out, it looks like a school code than production code. How? Any suggestions?

My solution:
FindSubString.java

/**
 * FindSubString.java: Find sub-string in a given query
 * 
 * @author zengr
 * @version 1.0
 */

public class FindSubstring {
    private static final String startHighlight = "[[HIGHLIGHT]]";
    private static final String endHighlight = "[[ENDHIGHLIGHT]]";

    /**
     * Find sub-string in a given query
     * 
     * @param inputQuery: A string data type (input Query)
     * @param highlightDoc: A string data type (pattern to match)
     * @return inputQuery: A String data type.
     */
    public String findSubstringInQuery(String inputQuery, String highlightDoc) {
        try {

            highlightDoc = highlightDoc.trim();

            if (inputQuery.toLowerCase().indexOf(highlightDoc.toLowerCase()) >= 0) {
                // update query if exact doc exists
                inputQuery = updateString(inputQuery, highlightDoc);
            }

            else {
                // If exact doc is not in the query then break it up
                String[] docArray = highlightDoc.split(" ");

                for (int i = 0; i < docArray.length; i++) {
                    if (inputQuery.toLowerCase().indexOf(docArray[i].toLowerCase()) > 0) {
                        inputQuery = updateString(inputQuery, docArray[i]);
                    }
                }
            }
        } catch (NullPointerException ex) {
            // Ideally log this exception
            System.out.println("Null pointer exception caught: " + ex.toString());
        }

        return inputQuery;
    }

    /**
     * Update the query with the highlighted doc
     * 
     * @param inputQuery: A String data type (Query to update)
     * @param highlightDoc: A String data type (pattern around which to update)
     * @return inputQuery: A String data type.
     */
    private String updateString(String inputQuery, String highlightDoc) {
        int startIndex = 0;
        int endIndex = 0;

        String lowerCaseDoc = highlightDoc.toLowerCase();
        String lowerCaseQuery = inputQuery.toLowerCase();

        // get index of the words to highlight
        startIndex = lowerCaseQuery.indexOf(lowerCaseDoc);
        endIndex = lowerCaseDoc.length() + startIndex;

        // Get the highlighted doc
        String resultHighlightDoc = highlightString(highlightDoc);

        // Update the original query
        return inputQuery = inputQuery.substring(0, startIndex - 1) + resultHighlightDoc + inputQuery.substring(endIndex, inputQuery.length());
    }

    /**
     * Highlight the doc
     * 
     * @param inputString: A string data type (value to be highlighted)
     * @return highlightedString: A String data type.
     */
    private String highlightString(String inputString) {
        String highlightedString = null;

        highlightedString = " " + startHighlight + inputString + endHighlight;

        return highlightedString;
    }
}

TestClass.java

/**
 * TestClass.java: jUnit test class to test FindSubString.java
 * 
 * @author zengr
 * @version 1.0
 */

import junit.framework.Test;
import junit.framework.TestCase;
import junit.framework.TestSuite;

public class TestClass extends TestCase
{
    private FindSubstring simpleObj = null;
    private String originalQuery = "I like fish. Little star's deep dish pizza sure is fantastic. Dogs are funny.";

    public TestClass(String name) {
        super(name);
    }

    public void setUp() { 
        simpleObj = new FindSubstring();
    }

    public static Test suite(){

        TestSuite suite = new TestSuite();
        suite.addTest(new TestClass("findSubstringtNameCorrect1Test"));
        suite.addTest(new TestClass("findSubstringtNameCorrect2Test"));
        suite.addTest(new TestClass("findSubstringtNameCorrect3Test"));
        suite.addTest(new TestClass("findSubstringtNameIncorrect1Test"));
        suite.addTest(new TestClass("findSubstringtNameNullTest"));

        return suite;
    }

    public void findSubstringtNameCorrect1Test() throws Exception
    {
        String expectedOutput = "I like fish. Little star's deep [[HIGHLIGHT]]dish pizza[[ENDHIGHLIGHT]] sure is fantastic. Dogs are funny.";
        assertEquals(expectedOutput, simpleObj.findSubstringInQuery(originalQuery, "dish pizza"));
    }

    public void findSubstringtNameCorrect2Test() throws Exception 
    {
        String expectedOutput = "I like fish. Little star's [[HIGHLIGHT]]deep dish pizza[[ENDHIGHLIGHT]] sure is fantastic. Dogs are funny.";
        assertEquals(expectedOutput, simpleObj.findSubstringInQuery(originalQuery, "deep dish pizza"));
    }

    public void findSubstringtNameCorrect3Test() throws Exception 
    {
        String expectedOutput = "Hello [[HIGHLIGHT]]how[[ENDHIGHLIGHT]] are [[HIGHLIGHT]]you[[ENDHIGHLIGHT]]r?";
        assertEquals(expectedOutput, simpleObj.findSubstringInQuery("Hello how are your?", "how you"));
    }

    public void findSubstringtNameIncorrect1Test() throws Exception 
    {
        String expectedOutput = "I like fish. Little star's deep dish pizza sure is fantastic. Dogs are funny.";
        assertEquals(expectedOutput, simpleObj.findSubstringInQuery(originalQuery, "I love Ruby too"));
    }

    public void findSubstringtNameNullTest() throws Exception
    {
        String expectedOutput = "I like fish. Little star's deep dish pizza sure is fantastic. Dogs are funny.";
        assertEquals(expectedOutput, simpleObj.findSubstringInQuery(originalQuery, null));

    }
}

Answer 1

A few comments;

• You only highlight the first occurance of the search string.
• You assume that lower case matching is fine. Unless this was specified as a requirement it might be better to provide two methods, one that respects case and one that ignores case.
• I would probably check the given parameters and throw a NPE if either of them were null. This would be the first thing my method did. I would clearly document this behaviour in the javadoc.
• Your method mame is bad; findSubstringInQuery‘s main task isn’t to find, it is to highlight and the inQuery part is superflous. Just call the method highlight or maybe highlightIgnoreCase if you are going to have a highlight that respects case.
• Your method parameter names are bad. I’ve looked at your method signature 10 times and still have to look at the method body to remind myself which arg is the search term and which is the text to search. Call them searchTerm and text.
• Production code doesn’t use the default package.
• Production code doesn’t use System.out.println().
• Your javadoc need improving, it needs to tell the user everything they need to know about the code.
• I would consider using static methods for a class with no class variables.
• I would also consider allowing the user to specify their own start and end highlighting markers (I wouldn’t use static methods if I did this).
• I wouldn’t trim() unless this was specified as a requirement. If I did, then obviously this behaviour would be documented in the javadoc.

I wouldn’t worry about the algorithm used for searching, Knuth-Morris-Pratt looks good but they shouldn’t expect you to know about it and implement it unless the job spec specifically asked for experience/expertise in string searching.