API and Full Stack Coding Patterns Questions
Beyond pure algorithms, be prepared for problems that combine algorithmic thinking with API design, rate limiting, caching strategies, or distributed system concepts. Understanding how a coding solution fits into a larger fullstack architecture.
HardTechnical
91 practiced
Implement a circuit breaker middleware in Python for HTTP calls. Provide a class CircuitBreaker(max_failures: int, reset_timeout_seconds: int) with a method call(func, *args) that opens after N failures, stays open for a cool-down period, allows a probe in half-open, and closes on success. Ensure thread-safety and provide metrics hooks.
HardTechnical
78 practiced
Case study: Your company must integrate with a legacy partner exposing a SOAP API. Design a modern RESTful adapter that internal teams can use: ensure idempotent endpoints, paginated resource access, schema mapping between XML and JSON, retries for flaky SOAP operations, WS-Security handling, and a migration plan to move clients off the adapter later. Provide testing and monitoring strategies.
MediumTechnical
85 practiced
You're designing a system that pushes real-time updates to customer dashboards. Compare WebSockets, Server-Sent Events (SSE), long-polling, and webhooks from the server perspective. For each option discuss scalability, firewall/proxy issues, ordering guarantees, reconnection strategies, and how to integrate with an HTTP-based backend.
MediumSystem Design
80 practiced
Design an API versioning strategy for a public REST API used by thousands of clients. Discuss URI versioning, header versioning, media-type versioning, semantic versioning for APIs, backward compatibility guarantees, deprecation timelines, documentation, migration tooling, and how to minimize client disruption during breaking changes.
EasyTechnical
78 practiced
Explain idempotency in the context of HTTP APIs. Describe which HTTP methods are idempotent by definition, why POST is not idempotent by default, and concrete patterns to make write endpoints idempotent (idempotency key, deduplication store, idempotent resource identifiers). Discuss trade-offs of each approach.
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