Title management

Each month some things change for Comics Helper. The problem I’m trying to solve this month is managing customers who subscribe to a comic. The more I understood each step, checking in, ordering, and managing pull boxes, the layout and usage of the application changed. Originally, I added the ability for a shopowner to create titles quite loosely. It turns out the need was more specific. I’m lucky to have a customer who has so much industry experience. Because his shop is undergoing some changes, now is an appropriate time to consider alternatives.

For comic titles, my customer needs to have a pretty specific feature set. I built comic titles with the following requirements:

Name,   note,   publisher
string, string, string

It worked but has an issue where it doesn’t satisfy how a shop handles titles getting renamed or edited. I was glad that I learned about that constraint. We now have an API that’s way more like this

key,     Title,   note,   publisher
_string  string,  string, enum

Adding that private key to the name field was super helpful. It made everything easier for me, and it’s what the customer wanted. Now, rather than having hold files as a free form entry on a customer, they’re constrained to created titles. This made everything I had to do, like aggregations, much more straightforward.

If you’re ever in Loveland, Colorado, you should absolutely check out this shop. They have a great collection of books and a gaming room. Additionally, they have a bunch of collectible cards. They have robust eBay sales and plenty of game and card interest. It’s going to be a while before I can make ComicsHelper vital to my customer. However, it is becoming a part of a business that is very robust. I should have no shortage of useful features to build.

I love a comic shop. It’s a fun place to be. I love stories, and comics are full of them. So are the folks who work at comic shops. That’s the core idea of ComicsHelper, make something useful to comic shops so that they can continue to thrive, so I can continue to go to them! I’m fortunate to have a local shop that’s interested in my app and one that’s so good at what it does.

Until next month…