Started with the core resources: users, tweets, timelines, follows.
Start by clarifying the scope and core requirements of Twitter's API, such as read/write operations, rate limits, and real-time updates. Then outline a high-level design covering key endpoints, data models, and scalability considerations, and dive into one or two areas in depth based on interviewer interest.
Pro tip: Demonstrate awareness of Twitter's unique challenges like the firehose and fan-out on write, and discuss trade-offs between consistency and availability for different endpoints.
Ask questions to understand which parts of Twitter's API to focus on (e.g., tweets, timelines, search, streaming) and non-functional requirements like latency, throughput, and consistency.
Identify main entities (users, tweets, follows) and design RESTful endpoints for key operations (post tweet, get timeline, follow user) with appropriate HTTP methods and status codes.
Propose schemas for users, tweets, and relationships, and choose storage solutions (e.g., SQL for user data, NoSQL for tweets, graph DB for social graph) based on access patterns.
Discuss partitioning, caching, and asynchronous processing (e.g., fan-out on write for timelines) to handle high read/write volumes and ensure low latency.
Highlight trade-offs (e.g., consistency vs. availability, push vs. pull for timelines) and mention extensions like rate limiting, authentication, and real-time streaming.
AI-generated suggestions, not part of the candidate's original notes. May be inaccurate — verify before relying on them.