Design a Food Delivery Cart Subsystem
Design the cart subsystem for a food delivery platform, similar to services like Uber Eats.
The system must support the following core functionalities for users:
- Item Management: Add, update quantities, and remove items from the cart.
- Customization: Select item customizations and add-ons.
- Pricing & Promotions: Apply promotions or coupons, and dynamically display updated taxes, fees, and subtotal.
- Session Persistence: Ensure the cart state persists seamlessly across different user sessions (e.g., mobile app, web browser).
- Checkout Readiness: Provide a consistent and validated cart snapshot when the user proceeds to checkout.
Key Assumptions and System Responsibilities:
- A cart typically contains items from a single restaurant at any given time.
- The system must actively handle dynamic changes such as menu updates, item unavailability, restaurant operational status (open/closed), and perform price revalidation during the checkout process to ensure accuracy.
Candidates should be prepared to discuss functional requirements, APIs, data model, storage choices, caching strategies, consistency models, scaling considerations, and failure handling mechanisms.
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Core dilemma
Balancing real-time data consistency and validation (pricing, availability, promotions) with low-latency user interactions for a highly dynamic user cart, especially during critical checkout flows.
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Interview prep
Unlock the interviewer X-Ray rubric, tradeoff matrix, stress tests, clarifying questions, and key concepts.
Design a Food Delivery Cart Subsystem
Design the cart subsystem for a food delivery platform, similar to services like Uber Eats.
The system must support the following core functionalities for users:
- Item Management: Add, update quantities, and remove items from the cart.
- Customization: Select item customizations and add-ons.
- Pricing & Promotions: Apply promotions or coupons, and dynamically display updated taxes, fees, and subtotal.
- Session Persistence: Ensure the cart state persists seamlessly across different user sessions (e.g., mobile app, web browser).
- Checkout Readiness: Provide a consistent and validated cart snapshot when the user proceeds to checkout.
Key Assumptions and System Responsibilities:
- A cart typically contains items from a single restaurant at any given time.
- The system must actively handle dynamic changes such as menu updates, item unavailability, restaurant operational status (open/closed), and perform price revalidation during the checkout process to ensure accuracy.
Candidates should be prepared to discuss functional requirements, APIs, data model, storage choices, caching strategies, consistency models, scaling considerations, and failure handling mechanisms.