Day 38 at Stafify: Completed Shift Management Module Conversion

Today was productive as I completed the conversion of our shift management module, including dynamic shift rendering and all CRUD operations. This represents a major milestone in our migration from Google Apps Script to the PHP/Laravel framework.

The morning began with refining the database queries that power our shift listings. I implemented eager loading strategies to minimize database calls when retrieving shifts with their related employee, department, and status information. This optimization significantly improved performance compared to our previous implementation, which made multiple separate calls to Google Sheets for related data.

I then rebuilt the shift creation functionality, which proved more complex than anticipated. Our original system had numerous client-side validations coupled with server-side checks in Apps Script. I refactored this into a clean controller-service architecture in Laravel, with form requests handling validation and dedicated service classes managing the business logic. The new implementation provides more comprehensive error messages and maintains all the business rules from our original system while being considerably more maintainable.

A significant portion of the day was spent implementing dynamic shift rendering. This involved creating API endpoints that return shift data in a format compatible with our frontend calendar component. I wrote a ShiftTransformer class that converts database records into the specific structure needed by FullCalendar, including proper handling of recurring shifts and special display attributes like color-coding based on shift status.

For the CRUD operations, I implemented RESTful controllers that handle the full lifecycle of shift records. Each operation now includes proper authorization checks using Laravel’s policy system, ensuring users can only perform actions they have permission for. This formalized permission structure is a significant improvement over our previous ad-hoc checking in Apps Script.

Perhaps the most challenging aspect was handling batch operations like mass shift assignments or deletions. These operations require careful transaction management to maintain data integrity. I implemented database transactions that ensure all related records are updated consistently or none at all, preventing the partial updates that occasionally occurred in our Google Sheets implementation.

I completed the day by writing comprehensive unit and feature tests for all the new shift management functionality. These tests verify both the individual components and their integrated behavior, giving us confidence that the migrated system maintains feature parity with the original implementation.

With the core shift management module now successfully converted to our new architecture, we’ve overcome one of the most complex parts of the migration. The resulting code is not only more performant but also follows best practices that will make future maintenance and enhancements much easier.

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