DEV Community: Andrew Tassone

Squashing and Merging - Telescope

Andrew Tassone — Fri, 10 Dec 2021 22:33:15 +0000

This week I completed by pull request with some squashing and the changes were merged by my professor. I found that the problem of page re-rendering and losing focus could be solved without using autoFocus and sacrificing accessibility.

As pointed out by @dukemanh , the problem can be solved by simply returning a JSX expression in searchInput.tsx. By doing so, it prevents a new component being returned every time and therefore stops the page from re-rendering unnecessarily. I also removed some fields and attributes that were unnecessary while in AuthorSearchInput.tsx.

It was a rather messy pull request in the end. I had to squash and rebase my two changes, but had some trouble doing so. I hadn't done much of either in previous pull requests. I am getting better at learning how to squash and rebase with this experience.

It was fun interacting with so many students from Seneca that were interested in solving the same issue. I hope to contribute more to Telescope soon and hopefully not make such a mess with my pull requests in the future!

Contributing to Telescope - Release 0.4

Andrew Tassone — Sat, 04 Dec 2021 03:08:30 +0000

While its been a busy week studying for final exams, I was able to work on contributing to Seneca's open-source project, Telescope for my final project. I chose to fix the issue of the search page re-rerendering on input. This was due the HTML 5 attribute, autoFocus that was removed in a recent commit.

ESLint recommends against using the attribute for accessibility purposes, however some sources indicate that it is acceptable, so long as the page is mainly used for searching such as in this case.

Accessibility is very important for users on the web. I want t o ensure this does not impact screen readers in a negative way. I know fairly well how important they can be for people like myself who are visually impaired.

Moving forward, I plan to also fix the rendering of the page after text is placed in the input field. The search page is supposed to search for results after the user inputs text, but does not seem to work unless the search button is clicked.

Contributing to Telescope has been fun and provides me with more experience for working on larger, more complex projects. I will continue to contribute more to Telescope in the days ahead!

The Great Site Generator v1.0 Release

Andrew Tassone — Sat, 27 Nov 2021 20:35:20 +0000

This week I focused on creating an initial v1.0 release of the project, The Great Site Generator. I was able to use Conan and Gitlab to create the release by following their guide. At first, I tried vcpkg, but found I couldn't get it to work with Gitlab. Conan was able to work well with CMake and did not require too much work. I was happy to see my project finally added to the Gitlabs registry.

I had to alter my code before this release. I wanted to ensure my code looked like it was ready and added another function to get rid of the remaining global variables. I asked one of my fronds, who is not in my program, to test out my initial release by following the README.md. They did not seem to have any trouble following it, except for requiring assistance to install Conan.

In order to try out TGSG, you can use the following command.
conan install the-great-site-generator/1.0@root+the-great-site-generator/stable --remote=gitlab--remote=gitlab

I hope the community enjoys v1.0 and helps to make it even better for the next release!

Learning Github Actions - The Great Site Generator

Andrew Tassone — Sun, 21 Nov 2021 03:09:50 +0000

This week I learned about the great uses of Github Actions for this project. I created a workflow that runs CMake and make on a linux system to compile and run the project. It then runs a command to ensure the project passes all tests with Google Test.

My partner, @jli used Catch2 to test his project. It looks very similar to Google Test and I was able to add another test to his project. This test is able to check if folders are read by the program. It was fun writing tests for someone else's project as I enjoy ensuring everything is running as smooth as it can be.

Now that Ive used CI, I realize how useful it can be for testing pull requests in projects before accidentally merging them with mistakes. I hope to keep using it in my future projects!

Code Reviews and Pull Requests - Release 0.3

Andrew Tassone — Sat, 20 Nov 2021 00:40:04 +0000

For my third release, I focused on contributing to the community with code reviews and pull requests. In both external and internal school projects, I helped to fix issues.

I helped to improve image viewing in a React app called Awesome Adoption that I had previously worked on during Hacktoberfest. Importing the Carousel component from Bootstrap, I was able to make images more accessible on mobile. I am still working on ensuring the image size is correct for all.

I also contributed to my internal school project called Telescope, a great tool for aggregating blog feeds. I helped fix an issue improving local development setup of the status dashboard for development purposes. My work was later merged with the help of the community.

I also did a few code reviews for the first time on Github. I reviewed two pull requests on Telescope. I had never checked out a pull request before and it was interesting working to test others contributions. I approved a change for updating the CSS of the build log dashboard and
adding a port redirect for nigx. I hope to contribute more to Telescope in the future!

Adding Google Test - The Great Site Generator

Andrew Tassone — Sat, 13 Nov 2021 04:23:28 +0000

This week I focused on adding a tester to my project. I chose to use Google Test as I have read it is a very popular tester for C++. Google Test cam be used easily with CMake which was also being used in this project.
I setup the tester by changing the CMakeLists.txt which can download the Google Test folder to the root directory by only using FetchContent_Declare.

While writing the test cases, I learned that it was more difficult than I had expected. I made sure my tests checked that the HTML output files were correct by reading the file and comparing it to the correct lines. I got stuck trying to get CMake to compile correctly. I eventually figured out that I did not have the correct executable files listed.

I have used a tester before, when contributing to other projects on GitHub. They are a great way for developers to check their own code and for others to contribute without breaking any parts of the project. I will continue to try to incorporate testers like Google Test in my projects.

Adding a Linter - The Great Site Generator

Andrew Tassone — Sat, 06 Nov 2021 03:39:38 +0000

This week I focused on adding clang-format to my code to have better consistency when other developers are contributing. I chose this as it has a VSCode extension and works very well with C++ which is what my project is written in.

I added settings in the .vscode folder to ensure that every time a user saves their work, the code is automatically formatted according to the .clang-format file requirements. Originally, there was a script I created, but I decided to remove it as it wasn't very necessary when VSCode automatically formats it anyway.

After running it on my code, I noticed it had found many things it didn't like. It mostly indented long lines into shorter lines for easier readability. It also moved some braces around.

I finally learned how I can integrate formatters into my IDE and make it easier for developers to contribute. That is what Github is all about after all!

My Last Pull Requests For Hacktoberfest

Andrew Tassone — Fri, 29 Oct 2021 19:26:57 +0000

This last week of Hacktoberfest, I finished my last pull requests. I solved an issue for a Pet Adoption site built with React. The other pull request involved supporting count(1) for an SQL database queries in QuestDB.

To solve the first issue, I had to create a private route for the reset-password page. I had never done this before, so I had to do some research on private routes. I made a mistake at first by using the wrong authentication type but the developer was very helpful and I figured it out.

The other issue for QuestDB involved accepting count(1) the same way as count() in a database query. I struggled very much with this as it was a larger project. The developer again gave me some directives on what to do.

Both issues were eventually merged just in time. Hacktoberfest was a challenge for me, who is not very experienced as a developer yet, but I managed to complete four pull requests before the deadline and learned a lot from the experience. Best of luck to the other developers who have contributed greatly!

First Pull Requests - SnapIT HacktoberFest

Andrew Tassone — Fri, 15 Oct 2021 18:51:13 +0000

I began working on pull requests for HacktoberFest this week. I haven't really done much work on big repos, other than my classmates or my own. I found a great project by SnapITSolutions that is an open source project that directs users to their in-person and virtual hackathons.

I enjoy working with react and websites so I thought this would be fun to work on. I solved two open issues that were created by another developer. The first was adding support for other languages to the homepage. The other included adding support for other languages to the registration page.

In order to fix these issues, I first had to add the translations required into a json file for both es-us and en-us. I then had to ensure the react-intl module was imported to provide the service for each page. Lastly, I added FormattedMessage to all buttons and textfields as a wrapper, in order to translate all of the values.

After I was done creating my pull request, I realized I missed a step in the contribution guidelines that require all pull requests to be linted and tested with ESLint. Tests failed the first time but I was able to correct it by simply importing the react-intl module in one of the pages.

The code was eventually merged by the developer. I created one pull request instead of two which meant less credit for Hacktoberfest, so the developers were nice enough to allow me to create another one.

It felt great contributing to the community and communicating with someone who's all the way in Texas. I hope to continue to work on this project and make it even better!

Refactoring The Great Site Generator

Andrew Tassone — Fri, 15 Oct 2021 16:40:42 +0000

This week, I focused on refactoring this project using git rebase to rewrite history on a branch for my first time. I also learned how to use git commit --amend to change the information in my commit.

I wanted to reduce redundancy in my code so I created a function called readFolder() for reading folders. I also combined readMarkdownFile() into readFile(). This supports both file types of either .txt or .md.

Lastly, I separated these functions into a new class called Reading. I then placed the class into its own reading.h file. I broke it a few times during this process, usually just forgetting a brace somewhere.

Using the interactive vim to edit commits was new to me. Ive used command line editors before but not very much. At first, I made a few mistakes by accidentally adding too many spaces between the commit ID and action. I received a few errors but figured it out eventually!

Changing git history was interesting and a useful thing to learn when cleaning up code and changing commits. It was confusing to do at first but I will keep practicing. I hope to use it again in the future!

Drafting My First Pull Request

Andrew Tassone — Mon, 11 Oct 2021 02:56:39 +0000

This week, I focused on adding a new feature to my friends site generator, LENNAH SSG. Using a fork of his project with an issue branch, I was able to add support for config files using --config. I also created a draft pull request in order to better communicate our ideas to each other.

I ran into issues adding support for folders in the config file, as it has to recognize both files or folder. I solved this by first checking for a .txt extension in the JSON file and then using the recursive file checking method, implemented before to read files within a folder.

It was very difficult working on someone else's code, however after some time playing with it, it feels just like my own! My friend, @jli was very satisfied with my work and I hope to collaborate with him again in the future.

I learned a great deal from this experience. I am now more familiar with how I can collaborate with others on Github and contribute to the community using the draft pull request feature. I also learned more about merging and pushing to a remote repo.

Adding Language Support and More! - The Great Site Generator

Andrew Tassone — Thu, 30 Sep 2021 21:36:19 +0000

Along with support for html headers in markdown, the --lang flag for specifying a language is now supported!

Three language tags including English Canada en-CA, French fr and Brazilian Portuguese pt-BR are currently supported with more coming in the near future!

Other features, such as more accurate error detection and prevention has also been improved. If there are no errors, the program will exit with 0. Otherwise, it will exit with 1 as per C++ standards.

This was the first time I worked on issues using Feature Branches. I usually just work on my main branch, but I'm aware a lot can go wrong that way!

I will be working on adding more features soon. If you'd like to contribute, you can fork it on Github