Weekly report
| Student: | @student.ucll.be |
| Study: Professional Bachelor | Major: ICT |
| Company: Yappa | City: Hasselt |
Activities Week 09 (20/04/2026 - 24/04/2026)
Monday (Day 41)
Today, I focused on addressing the feedback received from Davy regarding the first Proof of Concept (POC) Pull Request. The primary objective was to significantly reduce the PR's scope and complexity to improve its reviewability. To achieve this, I removed the abstract base service infrastructure and unified interfaces, opting instead for a straightforward, concrete execution flow from the Controller through the Service to the Repository. This refactoring proved highly effective: the PR size was reduced from 90 to 40 changed files, and the lines of code (LOC) dropped dramatically from +4500 to +1500. Alongside this, I resumed work on the Step 2 PR, which focuses on HTML content extraction from user-provided URLs.
Tuesday (Day 42)
Today, I continued working on the second step PR for HTML content extraction. The task involved extracting as much meaningful content as possible from a provided URL. I utilized a PHP Readability library to parse the HTML and cleanly extract the main article content, effectively filtering out unnecessary elements such as navigation bars, advertisements, and footers. This ensures that the generated AI summaries are based purely on the actual content of the linked pages. Furthermore, I began working on the Step 3 POC, which focuses on digest generation.
Wednesday (Day 43)
Today, I completed the digest generation PR for the MVP. This pull request introduces the ability to generate concise AI summaries for every knowledge item within a category, compile them into a unified digest report, and automatically synchronize the results with Notion. For the remainder of the day, I transitioned to the Slack integration, focusing on a TypeScript PR to build the frontend interface for digest generation and category management.
Thursday (Day 44)
Today, I dedicated the day to addressing and resolving code review feedback from Davy across the three open Proof of Concept (POC) pull requests. For the first PR, the feedback focused on improving the NotionRepositoryManager. The original implementation required manual updates whenever a new repository was introduced. To resolve this, I implemented a DatabaseResolverInterface with a supports() method across all Notion repositories, enabling the system to automatically and dynamically resolve the appropriate repository. For the second PR, Davy recommended integrating the league/html-to-markdown library for HTML-to-Markdown conversion. This integration successfully replaced our custom parsing logic, eliminating several complex and brittle regex patterns while significantly improving output reliability. Finally, for the third PR, I addressed a few minor structural comments to prepare it for final review.
Friday (Day 45)
Today, I resolved the final follow-up comments from Davy on the three POC pull requests and submitted them for final approval. With the backend foundation nearing completion, I shifted my focus entirely back to the Slack integration PR. Unlike the previous pull requests which were focused on the Symfony backend, this work is entirely within the TypeScript repository. The TypeScript integration involves building the Slack UI components, handling interactive payloads, and ensuring a seamless user experience for the digest generation and category management features directly within the Slack client.
New skills
- Refactoring large Pull Requests for improved reviewability by simplifying the architecture.
- Implementing HTML content extraction using a PHP Readability library.
- Implementing dynamic service resolution using a
supports()interface method. - Integrating external libraries (
league/html-to-markdown) for robust format conversion.
Useful data
Remarks
Returning from a two-week break, it was refreshing to dive back into the codebase. Simplifying the architecture of the initial PR was a valuable lesson in balancing architectural patterns with practicality and reviewability.