Creating a small proof-of-concept application in an afternoon

This morning, I was asked a “Could you build…” question.

It was an idea mentioned a short while ago and involves a simple, interactive form on the front end that sends requests to a public API, filters the results from the response and displays them to the user.

I'd probably want to hide the API request behind a service responsible for interacting with the API and filtering the results - ensuring that the API could be switched with something else later if needed.

This afternoon, I built a small proof-of-concept application with Vue.js and TypeScript.

There's no API, or service retrieving real-time results. All of the data is hard-coded within the App component, as well as the code that filters, sorts and returns the results.

The results are shown by adding a to the page, with a to show the input data.

There isn't even any styling, with just some basic horizontal rules to split the page - similar to these screenshots from Taylor Otwell of some work-in-progress versions of Vapor and Nova.

A working proof of concept, or a "spike", answers the initial "Can we build..." question. It can be shown to a client or other stakeholders, act as a starting point for discussions and requirements gathering and then be turned into user stories. It also allows the Developers to validate their initial thoughts and experiment with different approaches.

If the spike is successful, the idea can then be moved forward and implemented in a full way, otherwise, it can be stopped with a minimal amount of effort and time.