Category: General

Planning Cards – an iOS and a WatchKit App

Post author By Andre
Post date August 3, 2020

A few months ago I launched Planning Cards, an app designed to help Agile teams during their backlog refinement sessions. The app is very simple. The premise of the app is that users select a card and tap again to reveal the value to their team. Software engineers working in Agile teams do this very frequently to assign chunks of work value based on development effort. Teams usually use tools such as physical cards which can be limiting, especially if your team isn’t using a standardized point-system or if you forget to bring your card deck to the meeting. I’ve personally used some apps for this purpose but sometimes wanted to use my Apple Watch without having to bring my phone to the meeting. I also wanted custom card decks. Therefore, I decided to develop Planning Cards.

This post is going to be a broad overview of the application. To best understand how the application works feel free to look at the source code, which is available here.

Tags iOS, SwiftUI, WatchConnectivity, watchkit, watchOS

General

Building a Backend – Testing Endpoints (Part 3 of 3)

Post author By Andre
Post date April 29, 2020

Welcome to the last part of my series on how to build an API. In this tutorial I’m going to cover testing your endpoints as an application would be using them. This will provide higher level coverage for our api project and database and is a great way to test the business logic of your endpoints and database.

General

Building a Backend – API (Part 2 of 3)

Post author By Andre
Post date April 29, 2020

In this part of the series I am going to build on what we learned in part 1 of the series by creating a Web API. After this tutorial, we will have endpoints that allow us to create and read data from our database.

In this tutorial we are going to be using Node.js to set up a web server. In addition, we’re going to use the Express.js framework to help us quickly layout our routes. We will also be configuring our project to use Typescript. I will also help you set up your project for unit tests using jest.

General

Building a Backend – Database (Part 1 of 3)

Post author By Andre
Post date April 26, 2020

In this series I am going to be covering how to create a backend from start to finish. I’m going to cover the process in several different sections. For our database we will be using PostgreSQL. I’ll go over all of the steps in detail, including what tools I’m using.

The architecture used in this series is built to be scalable, yet hopefully very simple for beginners. I’ll try my best to explain why I used certain technologies as we go along.