Design a meeting scheduler API

Meeting Scheduler API

Design an in-memory MeetingScheduler class that manages meeting bookings for a single room and provides methods to add meetings and find the earliest available time slot.

You are required to implement the following interface:

class MeetingScheduler:
    def __init__(self):
        """Initializes the scheduler."""

    def book(self, start: int, end: int) -> bool:
        """Books a meeting from start to end (exclusive). Returns True if successful, False if there is a conflict."""

    def earliest_available(self, duration: int, search_start: int, search_end: int) -> int:
        """Finds the start time of the first available slot of 'duration' length within [search_start, search_end). Returns -1 if no such slot exists."""

Constraints

• Time inputs are integers representing minutes from the start of the day.
• The system must handle concurrent calls to book safely.
• Efficiency is critical; consider the complexity of both finding gaps and inserting intervals.

Example

scheduler = MeetingScheduler()
scheduler.book(10, 20)      # Returns True
scheduler.book(15, 25)      # Returns False (Overlap)
scheduler.earliest_available(10, 0, 50) # Returns 20 (gap between 20 and 50)

Edge Cases

• Zero-length meetings or zero-duration search requests.
• Search range starts after the last booked meeting.
• Fully overlapping, partially overlapping, and contiguous meeting blocks.