DEV Community: Martin Machava

SnapNews (build in public)

Martin Machava — Mon, 26 Aug 2024 18:06:43 +0000

It's been a while, but I've finally taken the plunge to create and launch a new product! 🚀

The Concept: AI-Driven Personalized Newsletters 📰🤖

Ever wondered how to stay updated on your favorite topics without endlessly scrolling through Twitter or Google? 🤔

Imagine receiving tailored news summaries on your interests, delivered right to your inbox!

Whether you prefer daily, weekly, or monthly updates, this service has got you covered. After scouring the web for similar offerings and coming up empty-handed, I decided to build it myself.

Crafting the Prototype ⚙️

The journey began with a simple question: How challenging would it be to bring this idea to life?

Recently, I made the switch from ChatGPT to Perplexity, attracted by its multiple LLM models and integrated search engine. The PPLX API, though limited to a single endpoint, seemed perfect for my needs.

One Friday evening, post-9-to-5 grind, I rolled up my sleeves and whipped up a prototype using ExpressJS. It could take a user's topic of interest and summarize search results into a newsletter. A promising start!

My mantra this time: Ship fast, focus on one core feature, and attract those first users!

Initially, I considered using Discord as the primary interaction channel to bypass the need for a frontend. But as we know, plans often evolve...

Diving into Discord Integration 🎮

While Discord integration was new territory for me, it wasn't insurmountable. However, I soon realized that Discord's character limits for posts would hinder my ability to showcase full newsletter previews.

This realization led me to develop a frontend for:

Real-time newsletter previews
Stripe pricing integration

The backend needed to handle:

Discord user authentication and registration
Slash command processing
/preview 👉 Instant newsletter previews
/create-newsletter 👉 Set up recurring newsletters
/manage-newsletters 👉 Review or cancel existing subscriptions

I also added a nifty feature allowing users to copy newsletters they admire from others, embracing the community aspect of Discord.

Crafting the Perfect Landing Page 🛬

With a functional frontend in place, it seemed only natural to create an enticing landing page to showcase the product and potentially boost conversion rates.

Challenge accepted! 🍺

Having recently dabbled with Angular and finding it more to my liking than React, I decided to stick with it. For styling, I opted for Tailwind CSS, using it first time ever and I love it!, resulting in a sleek and professional look.

Building a Smarter AI Search Engine 🔍🤖

While Perplexity API was functional, it lacked options for controlling result dates and providing source references. Determined to offer fresh, verifiable news, I spent a weekend crafting a custom AI search engine.

The process involves several steps:

GPT-4o mini 👉 Interprets the topic and generates 3 Google search queries
Google Search API 👉 Fetches 10 results per query within the specified timeframe
Google Search API 👉 Queries for "negative" results outside the timeframe to filter out dated news
GPT4o mini 👉 Reviews and filters results for relevance and freshness
Perplexity API 👉 Processes filtered links to create the final newsletter

And of course, the newsletter is then delivered straight to the user's inbox!

If you've made it this far and want to experience AI-powered personalized news for yourself, check out SnapNews 👈

You can also find more details about my journey on Indie Hackers.

(SEO backlink)

Salesforce objects in Kotlin under 5 minutes

Martin Machava — Tue, 07 Jun 2022 08:01:38 +0000

salesforce.codegen.link

WHAT IT DOES?
Generates Salesforce object classes in Kotlin code so you don't have to write them all manually.

HOW?

you grant permissions to the site to your salesforce objects
then site can load salesforce objects in a list
you select those objects that you need for your use-case
when you are done, you proceed to the next button which loads fields of selected objects
all this is done in the context of the website, from your browser, it works similar as Postman. You can even inspect all api calls. By clicking generate button, your selected objects and fields are passed to the backend which generates the code and in few milliseconds it's printed on your site
as a bonus, I'm also providing simple rest api client so you can load data of your objects but so far it's not the main objective of this site.

Easy, huh?

FUTURE?

add cookies so you stay logged-in after you refresh the page
option to pass gist token so the generated code is stored under your GitHub account
login so your preferred settings are stored between sessions
Gradle/Maven integration so you can run it from command/pipeline and generate/update objects code whenever needed.

DOUBTS?
When you are not logged-in, I added mocked data so you can first load those and try the functionality before granting the access.
Or you can create free developer account and try that one.
Bellow I recorded video on how to use CodeGen and how to implement generated code into your project.

DEMO

Let me know in the comments what you think.

Kotlin delegated properties

Martin Machava — Sun, 13 Mar 2022 09:44:25 +0000

Let’s say you have an Entity:

You need to create a DTO for some reason. You probably do it like this:

Constructor here serves as a mapper. It maps Entity properties to DTO properties.
Types of DTO properties are resolved from its Entity. That’s good, we do not want to duplicate those types in DTO.
But you can also write DTO with delegated properties:

This looks almost the same as the first DTO. So what’s the difference?

delegated property is not ”real” property of it’s class
instead its getter and setter is delegated to Entity class
when Entity property is changed, that change is reflected in DTO delegated property, even when DTO was instantiated before the change
when DTO delegated property is changed, the change is reflected in Entity
when we do not want to modify delegated property, we set it to val instead of var.

Let’s see it in test example:

If you know a good example where to use delegated properties in practice, please, do let me know in the comment.

For more examples, unit tests and integration tests with Hibernate functionality where delegation “extends” the arms of Hibernate’s Entity, see my tests.