Fetch paginated data from two APIs
Company: Armada
Role: Software Engineer
Category: Coding & Algorithms
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Technical Screen
Write a function `get_enriched_records(api_a_url, api_b_url)`.
`api_a_url` returns paginated JSON in the form:
```json
{
"data": [
{"id": 1, "ref_id": "x1"},
{"id": 2, "ref_id": "x2"}
],
"next_page": 2
}
```
`api_b_url` returns paginated JSON in the form:
```json
{
"data": [
{"ref_id": "x1", "target_field": "value1"},
{"ref_id": "x2", "target_field": "value2"}
],
"next_page": null
}
```
Implement the function so that it:
1. Retrieves **all pages** from both APIs.
2. Joins the records from the two endpoints using `ref_id`.
3. Returns a list of objects in the form `{ "id": <id>, "target_field": <value> }`.
4. Preserves the order of records from `api_a_url`.
5. Skips any record if:
- `ref_id` is missing,
- the matching record does not exist in the second API,
- `target_field` is `null`, an empty string, or whitespace-only.
6. Handles missing keys, empty pages, and `None` values safely without crashing.
7. Uses normal HTTP request handling; assume the test harness will mock the API responses.
The focus is not on advanced algorithms, but on clean API retrieval logic, pagination handling, and defensive data validation.
Quick Answer: This question evaluates a candidate's competency in robust API retrieval, pagination handling, defensive data validation, and joining records across endpoints while preserving the order of source records and safely handling missing or malformed fields.