App update, discovering Protractor(testing) and an Angularjs State machine

So for the last couple of weeks, I have not be able to update my blog or finish a couple of the posts that I started writing. Well, I have...been a bit busy, with some the following things, 

Testing my app

I have been using the app(iOS) on my iPhone for the past couple of months now, which is both good and bad. The good thing is I can test it and the bad thing is, I can use it every day. Part of the reason, I started building this app is to have something that I can and like to use everyday and since I am already using it, the incentive to release it is not as high as if it were something that I could not use. Anyway I did make some good progress over the last couple of weeks, like 
  1. Delete the app from my iPhone and do a clean install: this did help me find a few simple bugs that would pop-up when the app is first installed
  2. GET AN APP ICON, FINALLY! this was a bit of a hurdle and I thanks to Fiverr and fivercrazyguy, I finally have my app icon.

The day job

This has actually kept me quite busy in the last couple of weeks, the client basically gave a spec and wanted certain it to be delivered quickly. 

Discovery of new things

One of the things that I do for my day job is, exhaustively test whatever I build. I call it a day job, but it's not really a day job working in a company or as part of a team as such. I am more like a solo freelancer/contractor, who is given a job to do and I must finish the job and deliver. Most of the work I do is very independent and as off late since I have gotten to know the underlying system better, I get almost no help from anyone and it is not even required. So the job involves analysing/thinking about a solution, then building(coding) it and then making sure it all works in various scenarios i.e. lots and lots...and lots of testing. I only just discovered Protractor and just looking at it, I think it is awesome. I mean, OHH MY GOD!! If I can automate some of the testing that I do, that will save me so much time. I am not sure, if many people know about or use Protractor or even Selenium(Java)? Anyway if not this iteration, at least by the next iteration for my day job, I will try to fully understand Protractor and have some tests automated. I mean if I cannot automate the testing, it's fine, but I will be happy knowing that I at least tried to automate the very very repetitive testing process that I must go through ever time I build something new.

State Machine

I work with AngularJS quite a lot and one of the things that I noticed is that a lot of the times, I need to maintain a certain state for the template and a lot of the code for the state maintenance goes in the controller. By state, I mean things like, when condition X show Y in template...etc etc. So looking at all that and given my research experience, I thought why not isolate the concept of a state from the controller via a State Machine service. I have already written the code to demonstrate what I am talking about, you can get it from here and I will be writing a more detailed blog post on it soon.

Finally....

Ok so this weekend, I plan to finish some of the outstanding things for my app like do one more round of testing, make a video that shows how the app works, what it does and build a website that highlights certain features of the app.

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