Coding My First SaaS: A Foodie's Full-Stack Feast

In this adventure, I embarked on a culinary coding quest: building my first 'SaaS', dedicated to food, eating, and the vibrant restaurant scene in London.

It's a project fueled by passion (and a co-founder with impeccable taste buds!).

Honestly, at this point we are so early in the ideation - we can test out a bunch of stuff and see what sticks!

Contents:

• Backend building
• Frontend frameworks
• Initial takeaways

I am trying to release each part as small foodie-logs, so you can follow our progress.

Backend Bliss with FastAPI

FastAPI served as our trusty kitchen, where we whipped up an API endpoint to deliver restaurant data to the frontend.

We encountered a few unexpected spice spills along the way, but with some careful debugging, we ensured a smooth dining experience for our users.

Frontend Flair with SvelteKit

SvelteKit's reactivity allowed us to create a dynamic and engaging user interface. We plated up restaurant listings, reviews, and other mouth-watering details, all served fresh from the backend.

This is a sick block of code that Gemini made that saved my butt with the Typescript and json serialization to the frontend. I did have to edit the assignments a bit but the logic was a-OK!

export const markerArray = Object.keys(
  data.props.dataframe.Venue).map(key => ({  
      lngLat: [data.props.dataframe.Longitude[key],
               data.props.dataframe.Latitude[key]],
    name: data.props.dataframe.Venue[key]
  }));

Cloud deployment

• Testing out a few architecture types that are available on Google Cloud Platform.
• For a quick and first iteration - we went with Google App Engine - a standard python deployment.
• It works well when we Dockerize the whole project. Not too scalable individually, so we will probably split this into a formal backend and frontend on the next iteration.

Key Takeaways

This project reinforced the importance of having a clear vision, utilizing powerful tools like TypeScript, and embracing the collaborative spirit. Building a SaaS is a challenging but delicious endeavor. So grab your apron, fire up your code editor, and let's get cooking!

• "Building a SaaS is no picnic, but it's incredibly rewarding. It's like creating your own digital restaurant, serving up solutions to hungry users."
• "TypeScript is like a sous-chef, keeping your code organized and preventing kitchen nightmares. I'm definitely getting better at wielding this culinary tool."
• "Co-founding with a friend who's a foodie genius? That's the secret ingredient to success. Two heads (and taste buds) are better than one!"

Bon appétit, and happy coding!