First question posted here, I appreciate the help in advance!
DS for shift:
{
hourStart: 0,
hourEnd: 23,
primaryOnCall: "dpeters@example.com",
secondaryOnCall: "mfurgeson@example.com",
}
GIVEN there is always a "default" shift for hours 0-23, n number of shifts which may overlap each other, and earliest shift takes highest priority (other than default). Shifts may overlap to the next day. Return a new array of shifts that cover the the entire day.
example input:
[
{
hourStart: 0,
hourEnd: 23,
primaryOnCall: "dpeters@example.com",
secondaryOnCall: "mfurgeson@example.com",
},
{
hourStart: 18,
hourEnd: 2,
primaryOnCall: "mfrugal@example.com",
secondaryOnCall: "ismith@example.com",
},
{
hourStart: 07,
hourEnd: 15,
primaryOnCall: "jswanson@example.com",
secondaryOnCall: "hcotel@example.com",
}
]
example output (needn't be sorted):
[
{
hourStart: 0,
hourEnd: 2,
primaryOnCall: "mfrugal@example.com",
secondaryOnCall: "ismith@example.com",
},
{
hourStart: 3,
hourEnd: 6,
primaryOnCall: "dpeters@example.com",
secondaryOnCall: "mfurgeson@example.com",
},
{
hourStart: 7,
hourEnd: 15,
primaryOnCall: "jswanson@example.com",
secondaryOnCall: "hcotel@example.com",
},
{
hourStart: 16,
hourEnd: 17,
primaryOnCall: "dpeters@example.com",
secondaryOnCall: "mfurgeson@example.com",
},
{
hourStart: 18,
hourEnd: 23,
primaryOnCall: "mfrugal@example.com",
secondaryOnCall: "ismith@example.com",
},
]
One of my colleagues suggested brute forcing it by creating a hashmap of every hour in the day and then looping through that at the end to recreate schedules. It would help if anything was fixed (always only 3 shifts in a day, schedules don't overlap, priority of what overlaps doesn't matter) but none are at play here. Again, thank you for reading and I look forward to seeing your responses!
One thing is that there are only 24 hours in a day, so you can just create a table with 24 slots (henceforth referred to as TimeSlot) and each slot could have an entry with a priority number. These entries are smaller constituents of shifts. Each entry is labelled with priority by the shift's starting hour. One can set the default shift to have a priority of +∞ so that it always gets the least priority.
E.g.
Decide the default shift if hourStart == 0 && hourEnd == 23. Now iterate over this shift's hours and insert them into the TimeSlot, hour by hour
[Def(+∞), Def(+∞), Def(+∞), Def(+∞), Def(+∞), Def(+∞), Def(+∞), Def(+∞), Def(+∞), Def(+∞), Def(+∞), Def(+∞), Def(+∞), Def(+∞), Def(+∞), Def(+∞), Def(+∞), Def(+∞), Def(+∞), Def(+∞), Def(+∞), Def(+∞), Def(+∞), Def(+∞)]
Move to the next slot, from 18 to 2, Now the TimeSlot looks like
[S1(18), S1(18), S1(18), Def(+∞), Def(+∞), Def(+∞), Def(+∞), Def(+∞), Def(+∞), Def(+∞), Def(+∞), Def(+∞), Def(+∞), Def(+∞), Def(+∞), Def(+∞), Def(+∞), S1(18), S1(18), S1(18), S1(18), S1(18), S1(18), S1(18)]
since all the default slots are of lower priority than S1.
Move to the next slot, from 7 to 15, Now the TimeSlot looks like
[S1(18), S1(18), S1(18), Def(+∞), Def(+∞), Def(+∞), Def(+∞), S2(7), S2(7), S2(7), S2(7), S2(7), S2(7), S2(7), S2(7), S2(7), Def(+∞), S1(18), S1(18), S1(18), S1(18), S1(18), S1(18), S1(18)]
again replacing all the default slots with (and even S1 if there was such an overlap) S2.
That's it. You have the schedule.