Weekly Progress Report
This week, I focused my time on planning and design for my project as well as going through the Spring Boot Official Documentation to try to familiarize myself with the framework. I made a pretty impactful decision early on in the design phase–I’m using Thymeleaf for the frontend instead of React. I feel that this aligns more with my goals for the project and helps reduce the scope/complexity. I want to spend most of my time learning Spring Boot, not fighting with complex JavaScript frameworks.
I created detailed API documentation and database designs, outlining 15+ REST endpoints with specific request/response formats, five database tables, authentication system with JWT tokens and comprehensive test cases for the database, API, and portfolio performance calculations.
Samples from Design Documents:
This week, I’m finally moving from planning to coding. I’ll set up my development environment with all the tools I need (JDK, IntelliJ, and Maven for managing dependencies). My first goal is getting user registration and login working properly. I want to implement secure password storage and JWT tokens so users can stay logged in. It seems like getting authentication right will be crucial for everything else to function. I’m also planning to create my first database entities and the service layers.
I’m feeling encouraged about the progress so far, though I know the real challenges are coming with implementation. The Yahoo Finance integration and security setup will probably be tricky since I’m still learning these concepts. I’m glad I spent time on detailed planning as having clear specifications has allowed me to feel like I now have a guideline for beginning implementation.