Forem: Valia Havryliuk

Redis client-side cache with async Python

Valia Havryliuk — Mon, 27 Jun 2022 23:46:38 +0000

We can’t imagine a modern application that uses cache without Redis, because Redis is the most powerful and fast storage. It also supports different kinds of data structures and provides everything needed to build effective caching. Here I will highlight one feature that was released with Redis 6.0 and explain how you can use it with async python: client-side caching.

What is client-side caching?

Imagine that you have an application that uses Redis to store cache values. To get value from Redis you should connect to a server, build command and pack it, send the data to a socket, wait a bit, receive a response, and unpack it. This is fast, but what if you want get data faster?

What if you could have a copy of some values in your application’s memory? This means that when you write to Redis or get values from it you also store the key and the value in memory. However, you need to keep a consistent copy, because typically you will have more than one copy of the application or you can have another application that can change a value in Redis storage. You need a way to know when a value has expired or someone has rewritten it.

Starting from version 6.0 Redis provides a mechanism to make this simple. The application can subscribe for changes and after that receive messages that values have mutated/expired. Two different strategies are available. You can...

Learn more: https://medium.com/the-pandadoc-tech-blog/redis-client-side-cache-with-async-python-6228a0121a12

PandaDoc R&D from the Inside: How We Work

Valia Havryliuk — Mon, 27 Jun 2022 23:43:43 +0000

At PandaDoc we have more than 40 teams working together to deliver our product to market. This article explains our structure, processes, and guidelines.

Teams

A team is a minimum building block of the organization. PandaDoc has three types of teams: feature teams, complex subsystem teams, and functional teams.

Feature Teams

Most (>90%) of our teams are feature teams (see Figure 1). Feature teams have the following characteristics:

Long-lived and stable
5 to 6 individuals in each team
cross-functional, with the technical know-how to contribute to any system or component
deliver end-to-end customer value

Every feature team can deliver a potentially shippable increment alone, or for a complex feature, in concert with another team or teams.

Every feature team has a Scrum Master and an Engineering Manager, both of whom work with 2 to 3 teams.

We grow new teams by training new team members in existing teams until they become proficient. After new team members are sufficiently trained, we form a new team.

Learn more: https://medium.com/the-pandadoc-tech-blog/pandadoc-r-d-from-the-inside-how-we-work-80e62e46c7fb

Finishing gitflow release from Gitlab runners

Valia Havryliuk — Mon, 27 Jun 2022 23:39:50 +0000

Gitflow is a great old way to manage project releases. It is a Git branching model that involves the use of feature branches and multiple primary branches. By using this model, developers create a feature branch and delay merging it to the primary branch until the feature is complete. Finally, this is really just an abstract idea of a Git workflow. This means it dictates what kind of branches to set up and how to merge them together.

Usually, it leads to too much manual work, therefore it is really great to have this process automated. We are going to use AVH Edition of the git extensions to provide high-level repository operations and a repository hosted in the Gitlab environment.

Continue reading: https://medium.com/the-pandadoc-tech-blog/finishing-gitflow-release-from-gitlab-runners-5fdc29bc8f53

God bless data trends

Valia Havryliuk — Mon, 27 Jun 2022 23:36:32 +0000

Visualizing data and modeling the processes are the key concepts for understanding the system you work with. You may have metrics to understand current system health (RPS, resource usage) with the possibility to look through historic data, and they are good at detecting anomalies, but it may be hard to detect trends for the upcoming months or even years.

Understanding the trends would allow you to a closer look at how you are doing, and, what is more important, how you will be doing. Such insights can help you earlier predict load, SLA, required resources, and prepare for rapid growth. It will allow building your system consciously. A deeper understanding provides greater control over it.

In this article, I would like to show you an example of how it is possible to get useful knowledge from the system I have been working with.

Learn more: https://medium.com/the-pandadoc-tech-blog/god-bless-data-trends-b1fa62a31128

Discovering and utilizing data trends in software systems

Valia Havryliuk — Mon, 27 Jun 2022 23:34:20 +0000

In this article, I would like to show you an example of how it is possible to get useful knowledge from the system I have been working with.

Learn more: https://medium.com/the-pandadoc-tech-blog/god-bless-data-trends-b1fa62a31128

Cache in asynchronous Python applications

Valia Havryliuk — Thu, 21 Apr 2022 20:06:13 +0000

Modern Internet would be impossible without caching. It is present literally everywhere in the web app: browser keeps its own cache to speed up page loading, CDN helps to serve static files faster, databases use buffer cache to optimize i/o operations on high rate queries. And applications are no exception. Unfortunately, most applications don’t use caching as much as they could. This is because developers typically use caching as a last resort to speed up a slow application. Caching also adds some overhead to an application: keeping the cache consistent and invalidate it at the right time is not an easy task.

In the article, we will talk about caching techniques in asynchronous Python applications. First, we’ll try to implement it on our own and then will take a look at third-party libraries.

Why asynchronous python, exactly? Regular python already has a lot of production-ready third-party libraries. Also, async python gives us some interesting possibilities, for example, we can run multiple coroutines to manage the cache.

Learn more: https://medium.com/the-pandadoc-tech-blog/cache-in-asynchronous-python-applications-aa83157af712

Making notarization as easy as eSign, legally and secure

Valia Havryliuk — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 18:34:47 +0000

Today, we’re launching PandaDoc Notary on Product Hunt!
https://www.producthunt.com/posts/pandadoc-notary

PandaDoc Notary - a Remote Online Notarization (RON) software built for businesses to simplify and automate online notarizations. It is all the great features of PandaDoc combined with Notary.

You meet over audio & video, perform identity verification, and sign the documents.

Our new product will help businesses with an in-house notary create, edit, eSign, and notarize documents online in minutes. With PandaDoc Notary, businesses can:

⭐️ Legally sign and notarize documents 100% online to save everyone’s time.
⭐️ Invite clients and teammates to a notarization session with a click of a button.
⭐️ Record notarial acts and eliminate fraud with state-approved software.

We are pumped to continue developing this, and will keep you posted along the way. We are happy to answer any questions you have!

Built a custom app for Confluence in 24 hours and won the Atlassian Codegeist Hackathon

Valia Havryliuk — Mon, 17 Jan 2022 19:07:19 +0000

This is a story about Soumi, a Software Engineer and Technical Writer. 3 months ago, together with her teammate, she participated in the Atlassian Codegeist Hackathon to build Forge apps for Jira and Confluence.

Confluence and Jira are both commonly used at her workplace for updating technical documentation and generating bug reports. These two Atlassian products were quintessential for organized software development and collaboration inside and among different teams.

Together with Souvik, they agreed to build an app for Confluence as they both had used it a lot. And they wanted to integrate it with a product that solved a key problem combined with Confluence and also had good APIs and comprehensive documentation.

After some research, they picked PandaDoc to add eSignature capabilities and make it easy to sign documents without ever leaving Confluence.

So here is the story of how they built a custom app for Confluence using PandaDoc API in 24 hours and won the Most valuable Storytelling category prize in the Atlassian Hackathon. She has also added detailed instructions, using which you can also create your PandaDoc-Confluence app or any other such app in no time. Let’s go!

Please, read the whole article in our tech blog:
https://medium.com/the-pandadoc-tech-blog/building-a-custom-app-for-confluence-using-pandadoc-api-3711f7152f02

Launched PandaDoc Tech Blog

Valia Havryliuk — Tue, 21 Dec 2021 02:28:32 +0000

Just 3 months ago, we launched PandaDoc for Developers. Since then, many developers have created their sandbox accounts and started exploring our API for free.

We carefully collected all the feedback and feature requests that we received and have been working to continuously improve our API capabilities.

And today, the first update is available! We are happy to announce the launch of 8 long-awaited API features to speed up and simplify your workflow: https://medium.com/the-pandadoc-tech-blog/pandadoc-api-enhancements-4978006ae205

To get updates from our team in the future, please, follow our Medium publication!

PandaDoc launches API for Document Generation and eSignatures

Valia Havryliuk — Fri, 22 Oct 2021 20:56:33 +0000

Today, we’re launching PandaDoc for Developers on Product Hunt. 🚀

https://www.producthunt.com/posts/pandadoc-for-developers

Our new API platform will help developers to create and integrate custom eSignature and document workflow solutions that support their unique business processes and needs in a matter of days.

Check out our post on Product Hunt and be sure to throw us an upvote or comment if you like what you see!

Picking the right stock photo for your next design project

Valia Havryliuk — Wed, 08 Jan 2020 11:15:04 +0000

We all love beautiful pictures

While building a website, iOS app, or another creative project, we will use eye-catching visuals. Those pictures will trigger specific emotions among our users and will emphasize the goal behind the design. Also, they will reflect a brand's voice, style, messaging, and target audience.

As a marketer and junior designer myself, I often look for nice visuals. I use them in articles, pet projects, banners, new adds or posts in social networks. With the power of resources mentioned in this guide, I can find hundreds of beautiful stock photos and images. And it doesn't take me ages.

Now I am happy to share my collection of stock photos & image sites with you. Enjoy!

Stock Photos

Pexels and Pixabay — well-known platforms for great free images:

Pexels provides high quality and completely free stock photos that are nicely tagged and easily searchable. Also, you can follow your favorite photographers there.
Pixabay has a broad library of 1.5 million royalty-free stock videos and photos shared by their community. Their images are searchable using a search bar. Content can also be filtered by type.

Unsplash — a great collection of over 1 million beautiful photos contributed by their community of photographers. You can search by keyword, view trending images or browse through their collections.

FOCA — just amazing photos provided by Jeffrey Betts. It spans many categories, including nature, city scenes, workspaces, and macro photography. These photos are breathtaking, right?

FreePhotos.cc — absolutely free resource full of commons photos for your website or print projects:

gathers images in one place for easy preview and download,
all photos are put under 100 categories, from "art" to "yoga".

Magdeleine — a blog that features the best free high-quality stock photography for your inspiration. Easily search by categories, license, tag or even by dominant color.

pxhere — is another image website that has a similar look to Pexels:

makes it easy to find an image and offers a search bar & a tag system,
all free stock photos can also be filtered using colors.

Reshot — a massive library of handpicked free photos that don't look super corporate and boring. It's built for startups, freelancers, and makers who are sick of creative photos you won't find elsewhere. The main page features trendy photos and a search bar to look for your own.

StockSnap.io — their aim to make it easier to find, share and use amazing photographic imagery for any creative project:

find hundreds of absolutely free high-resolution images that uploaded weekly by the online community,
offers a search bar for finding the right image and no login or account is needed to download images.

SkitterPhoto — here you'll find a wide variety of authentic stock photos. The main page features admin picks and the newest photos. Also, it offers color palettes and tags to use as a filter.

Burst — a free stock photos and textures platform that is powered by Shopify:

various categories such as animals, business, family & much more,
it sorts by favorite, newest and top pictures, also can be filtered by tags.

Other cool image websites

We need to have more diverse visuals, as a way to show more voices. Check WOCinTech Chat to find photos of women technologists of diverse backgrounds. And take a look at The Gender Spectrum Collection that features images of trans and non-binary models that go beyond the cliches.

Are you looking for realistic food photos? FoodiesFeed is the most delicious website I've ever seen. It collects thousands of naturally looking food photos made by professional food photographers, food bloggers or passionate foodies.
For all who want to recapture history through cool vintage photos - New Old Stock. It's a growing collection of vintage photos from the public archives.
If you want to make a stylish blog using just one color palette, check Duotone. This awesome tool quickly adds a duotone effect to photos. You can search thousands of images via Unsplash or drag and drop your own images into the browser.

Thanks for reading!

If I missed something, please, share your favorite websites in comments :)

Originally published at UX Planet