Object-oriented design interview questionMedium

Design a Hotel Management System

Design a hotel domain model covering room types and rooms, guests, a half-open date-range value object, the reservation lifecycle, room assignment, check-in/out, and a charges folio, while preventing overbooking of a room type and overlapping stays on the same room.

1. Problem Statement

Design a hotel management system: guests reserve a room type for a date range, the hotel assigns a specific room, and the stay goes through check-in and check-out while charges accumulate on a folio. No two stays on the same room may overlap. Start by clarifying scope and the core objects.

2. Live Coding Format

Work in the provided coding workspace while explaining your decisions to the live interviewer. Validation may use inline tests, examples, comments, or a verbal walkthrough.

3. Key Focus Areas

  • 1
    RoomType/Room modeling and per-type availability
  • 2
    Half-open DateRange value object and overlap detection
  • 3
    Reservation vs. room assignment and lifecycle transitions
  • 4
    Folio charges in integer cents

4. What Strong Candidates Should Demonstrate

  • Model RoomType vs. Room and reservation vs. room assignment distinctly.
  • Design a half-open DateRange value object with correct overlap semantics.
  • Prevent overlapping active stays on the same assigned room.
  • Model the reservation lifecycle and a folio of integer-cent charges.

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Practice this problem in the live coding workspace while the interviewer probes your clarification, implementation, trade-offs, and validation.

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Core Concepts

Hidden because they name the technique, which a real interviewer would not tell you.

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Object-Oriented DesignDomain ModelingValue ObjectsState Machine

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