DEV Community: Francesco Borrelli

Create your own delivery app - Let's begin

Francesco Borrelli — Wed, 11 Jan 2023 13:47:23 +0000

Hello everybody!
Everyone said to me before starting this series to "start low", don't put too much on the plate or take one step at a time.

Not a chance.

So here we are, first step to create a delivery app.

We will try to tackle all the different parts that are needed for our app and use case. At every stage we are going to make assumptions and make some decisions based on those about the tech stack and approach. The process will be outlined like follow:

Basic requirements
Backend (code + infrastructure)
Frontend (web and mobile)
Observability and maintenance
Planning for the future

For simplicity we are going to focus on food delivery app. Of course the different domain specific part can be changed based on different industries but the core is going to be the same.

We are going to divide the project in three main functional areas:

Customer facing (mobile app/website)
Admin panel (for us to manage all the clients)
Backoffice (website to manage the point of sales and the app for local screens to be used with the till)
Riders app (mobile app to manage deliveries etc.)

Let's then focus on some use cases that we want to cover.

Customer facing:

User account creation and login
Restaurant browsing
Menu ordering
Payment processing
Order tracking
Push notifications
Address and contact information
Review and rating
Customer service

Backoffice:

Manage orders
Manage restaurants
Manage menu items
Order history and statistics
Payment and revenue management
Review and rating management
Customer service management

Rider App:

Rider registration and login
GPS tracking
Order assignment
Navigation
Communication
Payment processing
Document upload and storage
Earnings and stats
Schedule management
Manage multiple orders

Admin panel

User account management
Role-based access control (rider, client, customer)
Client management
Order management
Payment processing management
Reporting and Analytics
Customer service management
Integration management (ehhh maybe)
Push notification management

Does it sounds like a lot? you are totally right.
Of course we are going to start small and add a few piece at a time.
Trying to follow as much this picture:

For the purpose of this project I'm going to create a Trello board to keep all this tracked (otherwise I'm going to bin everything from day 2) and a Github organization with all the relevant code bases and projects (because yay opensource is good, no?).

General Board | Org git

So, what are you waiting for? go on! Let's start from the juicy backend

How you should not use (only) console.log

Francesco Borrelli — Thu, 05 Jan 2023 18:03:06 +0000

As a developer, I’ve worked with a lot of different languages and environments: C#, C++, Java, Go, Lisp, JS, PHP (and many more). The one thing in common between all of them is the debugging method that I’ve used: logging.

Being it a cout (C++) or System.out.println (Java), outputting something to the console/cli is an old as the world practice, in javascript this is done by console.log(arg) and here I'm going to give you more tools to help you debug your javascript code.

While console.log is a helpful tool, it should not be the only one you rely on for debugging. Here are some other ways you can use the console in javascript:

console.error: This function is similar to console.log, but it outputs the message in red and also prints the stack trace of where the error occurred. This can be helpful when trying to identify the source of an error in your code.
console.warn: This function works just like console.error, but the message is output in yellow and the stack trace is not printed. Use this for non-critical warnings in your code.
console.info: This function is similar to console.log, but the message is output in blue. Use this for informative messages that don't necessarily indicate an error or warning.
console.assert: This function allows you to test a boolean condition and output a message if the condition is false. For example, you can use console.assert to ensure that a variable has the correct value at a certain point in your code.
console.group and console.groupEnd: These functions allow you to group related log messages together, making it easier to read and understand the output in the console.
console.time and console.timeEnd: These functions allow you to measure the time it takes for a certain block of code to execute. This can be helpful for identifying performance issues in your code.
console.clear: Clears the console.
console.dir: Outputs an interactive list of the properties of the provided object.
console.table: Outputs the provided data in a table format.
console.count: Outputs the number of times this method has been called with the given label.
console.trace: Outputs a stack trace showing the calls that led to the current point in the code.

Some of the most useful are console.time and console.group, here are two example of their use

console.time


    console.time('Time taken');
    // code block to be measured goes here
    console.timeEnd('Time taken');

This will output as:


    Time taken: 100.123ms

You can also use console.time and console.timeEnd to measure multiple blocks of code and compare the results:

    console.time('Time taken for loop 1');
    // code for loop 1 goes here
    console.timeEnd('Time taken for loop 1');

    console.time('Time taken for loop 2');
    // code for loop 2 goes here
    console.timeEnd('Time taken for loop 2');

    Time taken for loop 1: 100.123ms
    Time taken for loop 2: 50.456ms

console.group

Here is an example of how you can use console.group and console.groupEnd to group related log messages together:

    console.group('Results for loop 1');
    console.log('Iteration 1: 10');
    console.log('Iteration 2: 20');
    console.log('Iteration 3: 30');
    console.groupEnd('Results for loop 1');

    console.group('Results for loop 2');
    console.log('Iteration 1: 15');
    console.log('Iteration 2: 25');
    console.log('Iteration 3: 35');
    console.groupEnd('Results for loop 2');

This will output something like:

    Results for loop 1:
      Iteration 1: 10
      Iteration 2: 20
      Iteration 3: 30
    Results for loop 2:
      Iteration 1: 15
      Iteration 2: 25
      Iteration 3: 35

Note that the label you provide to console.group and console.groupEnd should be the same in order to properly group the log messages together. You can also nest groups by using console.group within another console.group.

In summary, while console.log is a useful tool, it should not be the only one you rely on for debugging. By using the other functions in the console object, you can get a more comprehensive view of what's happening in your code and more effectively identify and fix issues.

One new kind of hackathon

Francesco Borrelli — Fri, 29 Apr 2022 14:50:04 +0000

A hackathon is any event of any duration where people come together to solve problems.

This is a complete and synthetic definition of what an hackathon is.
Usually in the tech field an Hackathon is a big event where promoters/companies challenge teams to overcome challenges and solve problems in a time constrained environment.

The teams can be both "pre-made" or formed on the fly during the event.

This kind of event is mainly used by the companies for two reason:

Finding new talents
Marketing the company itself who is organising/promoting the hack

The hackers instead find this a good way of connecting to fellow hackers and to up skill theirselves.

Personally I've participated into lots of those hackathon and just recently I experienced a new kind of hack, which really made my dev life, a lot better.

I currently work in a Tech department (1.5 years old) as a backend software engineer of a non-tech related company (~15 years old) doing the best to modernise it and make a huge breakthrough with a "digital wave" of solutions.
I'm also part of a team (that ourselves) called "Flexers" and we, as a team, decided to take on a big challenge and make an hackathon out of it.

We set the epics, investigated on feasibility and profitability for the company and then we just took a flight to Portugal to reach the goals in a week.

It is a really game changer in the team-building routine you might have in a company, since it will put have the team creating bonds while cooking or deciding what to do for the evenings.

On top of that, communication and exchange of ideas is 200% (really accurate rate) increased and better because everyone has an high level of comfort while working.

These were my outtakes of the last week, I sure it won't apply to everybody, but I just wanted to make it public as a good way of learning stuff and creating good synergies between people.

Please comment with your opinion on this :D

P.s. of course we reached the goal by implementing Stripe in-person terminal and Call-center payments for our CRM ;)

A quick chat on managing accesses

Francesco Borrelli — Fri, 11 Dec 2020 12:37:10 +0000

Hi everyone, this is my first post on dev.to and I wanted to gather some opinions and feedback on how you currently handle access management in your company/for your freelance projects.

We currently have an IT team that manages keys, credentials, and permission, but I do not know how they handle this internally.