Stack Overflow pack

Inspiration

I wanted to solve my own itch of easily browsing data from Stack Overflow. Coda doc is the perfect place to do so. This inspired me to write this pack.

What it does

Allows users to work with Stack Overflow data directly in their Coda doc.

How we built it

Typescript, Docker, VSCode, and Coda SDK

Challenges we ran into

Installing dependencies for local dev: I'm on a Windows and knew this would be a challenge. What I did is to use a docker dev container that has all the dependencies and develop directly in the container using VSCode Remote Container extension. I even wrote a full guide on how to do so: https://github.com/AlahmadiQ8/coda-pack-local-dev.
Setting up OAuth. This was chalenging because Stack Overflow requires the access_token to always be passed as a query param. Luckily, Coda pack SDK does support this specific use case with OAuth.
Dynamic AutoComplete: it was taking too long since i was fetching alot of rows. Had to limit results to 15 and use API sorting filter by popularity which was good enough solution.
Finding out a practical use cases for the demo doc. I did a mini user-research interview with Eric from Coda. He was very generious in providing me great feedback on many use cases.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

First time making a video tutorial
Able to ship a complete product
Learned a lot about proper documentation.

What we learned

Writing packs now seems so easy now that I went through the learning curve while developing this pack.
Learned more advacned Typescript typing techniques by looking at Coda SDK sourcecode.
Learned more about how to build a smooth development experience. I learned this from Coda's SDK and documentation. I wish more organizations have this much care about dev experience.
Making screencasts with Camtasia