GitHub Search App

A Flutter app for exploring GitHub users, their repositories, and related data via the GitHub REST API.

The project showcases clean architecture, API integration with Dio, state management using flutter_bloc, and golden/widget testing for reliability.

🚀 Features Implemented

Core Features

User Search

• Search GitHub users by username via /search/users endpoint.

• Paginated results with scroll-to-load-more support.

• Debounced search input to reduce API calls.

User Details

• View individual user details (/users/{login}).

• Displays profile information (avatar, bio, stats, created_at).

User Repositories

• List repositories for a user (/users/{login}/repos).

• Repository widget displays:

1. Name
2. Description
3. Language
4. Stars, forks, watchers
5. Creation date

Favorites

• Mark/unmark users as favorites.

• Stored locally with SQLite (sqflite) using a Favorite Users Repository.

• State managed via a FavoritesCubit.

Utilities

• Date Formatting

• DateTimeUtils.formatDate() for normalizing ISO 8601 timestamps into yyyy-MM-dd.

Endpoint Resolver

• determineEndpoint(RequestOptions) to map Dio request paths into semantic enums (Endpoints.user, Endpoints.userRepos, etc.) for consistent handling.

Extensions

• String.padStart (later replaced/fixed with Dart’s padLeft for zero-padding consistency).

🧪 Testing

Unit Tests

• determineEndpoint → verifies correct endpoint resolution with normalized/messy paths.

• DateTimeUtils → ensures valid ISO strings format correctly, invalid strings return unchanged, and padding works.

• FavoritesCubit → validates state transitions when toggling favorites.

• Database migrations tested for applying/upgrading schemas.

Golden Tests

• GoldenToolkit used for UI snapshots (CustomAppBar, search result tiles, etc.).

• Helped catch regressions in design during refactors.

Widget Tests (Via Goldens)

• Verified snackbars and state flows (e.g., “Added to favorites”).

🛠️ Architecture & Stack

• Framework: Flutter (3.x with FVM).

• State Management: flutter_bloc / Cubits.

• Networking: Dio (with error handling & request interception).

• Database: sqflite (with DatabaseHelper and migration runner).

• Testing: flutter_test, mockito, golden_toolkit.

⚡ Challenges Faced

Endpoint Mapping Ambiguity

• Normalizing URLs like ///users//dario///repos/// was tricky.

• Solved with _normalize and _segs helpers.

Date Formatting Edge Cases

• Extension padStart clashed with Dart’s own padLeft.

• Produced bugs like 2025-1-3 instead of 2025-01-03.

• Fixed by dropping the extension in favor of native padLeft.

SQLite Foreign Key Errors

• Inserting favorites triggered FOREIGN KEY constraint failed.

• Root cause: mismatched schema vs. insert queries.

• Fixed by ensuring favorite_github_users schema included proper relations.

Bloc State Handling

• FavoriteButton repeatedly triggered snackbars.

• Needed BlocSelector / BlocConsumer to refine rebuild behavior.

• Testing RepositoryProvider Contexts

Golden tests failed when RepositoryProvider.of<Storage>() couldn’t find context.

• Fixed by wrapping widgets in RepositoryProvider setup in tests.

GitHub Rate Limiting

• API unauthenticated requests hit 60 req/hr.

• Planned solution: add OAuth token support in Dio interceptors.

🔮 What I Would Do Differently

• Stronger Type Safety

• Replace raw String endpoints with enums or sealed classes across the networking layer.

• Error Boundaries in UI

• Build dedicated error widgets instead of snackbars-only flows.

• Better Offline Support

• Cache search results and user details in SQLite/Hive for offline browsing.

• CI/CD GitHub Actions pipeline to:

1. Run widget tests with golden diffs.
2. Auto-update golden images with approval step.
3. Push code coverage to Codecov.

• Use Retrofit/Chopper for APIs (potentially)

• Handwriting models & Dio calls was verbose.

• A Retrofit-style generator would cut boilerplate.

• Refine DB Layer

• Wrap raw sqflite with a repo/DAO pattern for cleaner testing.

Auth Integration

• Add GitHub OAuth login to raise rate limits & enable private repo support