Skip to main content

a walk in the dark side

Previously I got my first version of simple todo rest service working with scala and play framework and had some ideas what to do next. Since then I've implemented a second version of the rest service, this time backed by MongoDB. I also managed to create a simple web application as a user interface for the service.


TL;DR;


https://github.com/jorilytter/simple-todo/tree/mongodb-integration
https://github.com/jorilytter/simple-todo-ui


MongoDB with scala


This was a idea that I had earlier and the actual implementation was pretty straightforward with the help of salat library. Integrating salat with play framework required me to implement a custom context but salat documentation already provided this solution so it was just a matter of reading the documentation.

Other issue that I faced was with reading and writing json documents but that's where play's documentation provided the needed answers after some initial searches with google.

Like before the implementation is shared at my github account https://github.com/jorilytter/simple-todo/tree/mongodb-integration.


Walking in the dark side


It's been a long time since I've done anything related to user interfaces let alone created one from the scratch. I had decided that my todo application will have a user interface and it will be done with something out of my comfort zone.

The idea had been in my head for a while. I've seen and heard how modern javascript frameworks can do pretty nice things and easily interact with rest services. I asked my colleagues what was the hip javascript framework for interacting with rest services and got to work.

The choice was AngularJS as I was told that rest integration with it would be easy to implement. Sure the implementation was easy after series of trial and error and the fact that AngularJS is evolving fast also means that Q&A found in various blogs or at stackoverflow were partly outdated even if they were just a few months old.

I don't believe my implementation follows the best practices but with my lack of expertise with javascript I'm just happy I got it working.

This is also shared at my github account https://github.com/jorilytter/simple-todo-ui. If you feel the need to comment please be gentle, as I said this is way off my comfort zone.

In the end I'm happy that I went out of my comfort zone and actually managed to get something that works and I'm definitely going to do it again.
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Simple code: Naming things

There are two hard things in programming and naming is one them. If you don't believe me ask Martin Fowler https://www.martinfowler.com/bliki/TwoHardThings.html . In this post I'll be covering some general conventions for naming things to improve readability and understandabilty of the code. There are lots of things that need a name in programming. Starting from higher abstractions to lower we need to name a project, API or library, we probably need to name the source code repository, when we get to the code we need to name our modules or packages, we give names to classes, objects, interfaces and in those we name our functions or methods and within those we name our variables. Overall a lot of things to name. TLDR; Basic rule There's a single basic convention to follow to achiveve better, more descriptive naming of things. Give it a meaningful name i.e. don't use shorthands like gen or single letter variables like a, x, z instead tell what it represents, what it does...
Read more

Simple code: Version control commits

Currently the most popular version control system is git and I'll be writing this based on git and it's functionalities and capabilities. Git is often seen as a way to enable distributed programming i.e. multiple programmers can work on the same code repository quite easily without disturbing each others work (much). In addition to that just like other VCS's it's also a log of work but to my experience that part is often unfortunately neglected. What I will be focusing this time is the log part because I think it deserves more attention. Why to create a meaningful log? The git log should consist from small meaningful changesets where each commit addresses a single problem. By dividing the log to small commits it enables resilient way of working. Being resilient enables simple and fast procedures to rollbacks, reviews, tags, branching etc. Lets say that a developer is implementing a REST API. The API needs a web layer that receives the HTTP requests, it probably has some...
Read more

Simple code: Simplicity

Simplest solutions are usually the best solutions. We as software developers work with hard problems and solve a lot of small problems every day. Solving a hard problem itself is a hard job. Though in my opinion it's not enough to solve a hard problem in any possible way but a hard problem should be solved with a simple solution. When a developer comes up with a simple solution to a hard problem then they can declare the problem solved. First a disclaimer. Coming up with a simple solution to a hard problems is itself a very hard problem and takes a lot of time, effort and practice. I've seen my share of "clever" solutions for hard problems and the problem with those is that usually the solution itself is so hard to understand that depending on the size of the problem it may take a developer from hours to days or even weeks to understand how that "clever" solution works. It's a rare occasion when a developer has come up with a simple solution to a hard pr...
Read more