Full Stack Web Developer Intern | 2023
Fresh Prints is a company that specialises in custom apparel and clothing in the United States. Fresh Prints is making use of technology to run their business smoothly with the help of internal tech team working on OMS (Order Management System) and bunch of other projects essential for the business. I was offered this opportunity to interview for Full Stack Web Developer Intern role at Fresh Prints. As a positive outcome of this interview, I was offered the Internship Role upon completion of which, A Full-Time Web Developer Role is also offered to me.
I joined Fresh Prints on 2 January 2022 as a Full Stack Web Developer Intern and this started my journey of learning and meeting with experienced developers in the industry as a software developer. Initially for 3 weeks, all the interns had training sessions on technologies like Javascript, Typescript, Angular, NodeJs, MySQL, Git , Jira and BitBucket along with testing frameworks like Jasmine and Karma.
Initial Training & Project
Initially all the interns had regular standup calls in the morning which started our day. These days were spent on learning and creating an assessment project (Library Management System) using Angular, NodeJs, Sequelize, Express and Git. This project was intended to familiarise the interns with the tech and coding standards at Fresh Prints.
Additionally, we had daily training calls setup with Senior Developers, Solutions Architect and UI/UX Designers to understand the project completely giving the interns an idea, about the projects that we had to work on once this 3 weeks of training was completed.
After completing the Individual Projects, All the interns were finally assigned to their respective teams which included 3 Developer and 2 QA interns. Every team was headed by a Senior Developer and a senior QA at Fresh Prints.
PDF IMAGE PARSER PROJECT
PDF Image Parser (PIP) was a backend functionality used to parse specific images from the Proofs PDF. Proofs are pdf documents which contains Front and Back designs of a custom apparel that is designed by FreshPrint’s art team in Philippines.
Earlier, This functionality was coded in old and non-maintainable technology (Phantom Js) which is now deprecated and hence, making it harder for Fresh Prints to make changes in the same. Another challenge with the project was, It was deployed directly on the backend web server using CircleCI which increased the load and time complexity of getting results while parsing the pdf.
Problem Statement : Extract the front and back images of the artwork from the proof/design PDF so that it can be previewed in the Proof page for the Proof Items
Solution : After two weeks of Brain Storing and knowledge transfer sessions with the team members, We decided to recode and add new functionality as a micro service and deploy it to AWS Lambda which saves time and cost. Due to this solution, The cost is reduced by 96% than the previous implementation.
CHALLENGES AND IMPLEMENTATION
- The whole application was to be coded in TypeScript which implements strict type checking and prevents data type errors during the coding stage before deploying to production.
- The libraries used for parsing images are ImageMagick and GraphicsMagick which are standard when it comes to parsing images from pdf. These libraries posses a challenge where they require a certain set of OS dependencies before deployment.
- To overcome this OS Dependency, The Lambda function had to be deployed as a docker image where the base image was set to AWS NodeJs/Lambda.
- Coding along with team mates and managing the code through bitbucket and git is a very efficient way to handle projects since Pull Requests and Merging code along with Manager’s Approvals is an automated process and reduces the changes of errors & eases the version rollback procedures.
This whole project was a challenging task as it required extensive knowledge of AWS — Lambda, S3, API Gateway , Docker Images & Containers.
Along with the project, I was actively fixing bugs in the main V3 (Frontend) and V4 (Backend) applications for FreshPrints. I have resolved 3 High Priority bugs in both the applications. Additionally, I was also increasing Testing Coverage for frontend modules in Angular using Karma and Jasmine. Increased Code Coverage from 30% to 86%.
FUTURE PLAN
These 4 months at Fresh Prints have been amazing in terms of my learning curve. I have become a better developer and a great team player which resulted in Me Getting offered a PPO (Full Time Offer) at the end of this internship.
I am really thankful to Bennett University, SCSET Bennett, Career Services Bennett, My Manager and My team members for this wonderful opportunity.
CONTACT
Thank you for reading this blog. I hope it provided detailed insights of my current journey with Fresh Prints. If you have any doubts, Please connect with me on LinkedIn or through Email.