Solinum

Thanks to Zenika Brest, I had the chance to work as a volunteer for Solinum via a Vendredi partnership.

The job was pretty straightforward, to setup an open-source tracking analytics solutions called PostHog.

Solinum's technical stack:

• TypeScript
• Express
• Angular
• Lerna
• GitHub

As the mono-repository is well organized (real clean archi this time), it was quite fast to add some code.

The README.md was up-to-date (not a joke, a real README with instructions working like a charm!) and I started my journey in minutes.

The TypeScript implemetation was very handy too. I quickly stumbled upon all the types/interfaces needed for my first iteration.

Code

Type stuffs

As described earlier, my job was to setup a tracking system. In order to avoid some fuzzy events, I suggested a simple tracking rule.

With TypeScript litterals this suggestion turned quite robust.

Type definition

type Action = "EDIT" | "VIEW"; 
type Feature = "PLACE" | "SEARCH";
type TrackedEvent = `${Action}_${Feature}`;
type TrackedEvents = { [T in TrackedEvent]?: Lowercase<T> };

Constants

import { TrackedEvents } from "../types/TrackedEvents.type";
export const TRACKED_EVENTS = {
  VIEW_PLACE: "view_place",
  EDIT_SEARCH: "edit_search",
} satisfies TrackedEvents;

The const declaration avoid the enum problem and the satisfies operator ensure a magical inference.

Refactor

By removing the former analytics integration (MongoDB documents), I managed to delete a bunch of files/lines. Always cool.

I also took the initiative to refactor some specs with the infamous jest it.each method.

A use case where ChatGPT is delightful.

Conclusion

I had a lot of fun to do this tiny project. It helps a lot to work with other ways of coding.

Next time, I will stick more closely with my favorites craft paradigms (baby steps and mob programming) in order to ship even faster.