Book Catalog With API | Dataford Interview Questions

Create a catalog of books by fetching from an API, then add a new book and re-group and order books by user-selectable fields.

Implement the transformation after a successful API response. Input is a list of book dictionaries, one new book, a grouping field, an ordering field, and a direction. Return groups sorted by the grouping value, with each group's books sorted by the ordering value. Preserve the original order when ordering values tie.

Input: api_books, new_book, group_by, order_by, descending. Output: a list of {group, books} dictionaries.

Constraints

0 <= len(api_books) <= 5000
Each book is a dictionary containing group_by and order_by fields
All group_by values are mutually comparable
All order_by values within a group are mutually comparable
descending is a boolean
Duplicate books are allowed and must be preserved
Ties in order_by must preserve combined input order

Function Signature

def build_catalog(api_books, new_book, group_by, order_by, descending):

Your question is Book Catalog With API. Start with the requirements in the Question tab.

Run and submit as often as you like. When you're ready, talk me through your approach or go straight to the code.

Problem

Create a catalog of books by fetching from an API, then add a new book and re-group and order books by user-selectable fields.

Input: api_books, new_book, group_by, order_by, descending. Output: a list of {group, books} dictionaries.

Constraints

0 <= len(api_books) <= 5000
Each book is a dictionary containing group_by and order_by fields
All group_by values are mutually comparable
All order_by values within a group are mutually comparable
descending is a boolean
Duplicate books are allowed and must be preserved
Ties in order_by must preserve combined input order

Function Signature

def build_catalog(api_books, new_book, group_by, order_by, descending):

Your question is Book Catalog With API. Start with the requirements in the Question tab.

Run and submit as often as you like. When you're ready, talk me through your approach or go straight to the code.