Stories From the Trenches

Building an effective document search system requires more than basic PDF parsing. This comprehensive guide demonstrates how to create a hybrid RAG-powered search engine using Typesense’s dual indexing capabilities, custom PDF processing for mixed content types, and AI-driven visual context preservation. Learn how to handle complex documents with handwritten annotations, extract structured data from tables, and deliver accurate results by combining traditional text search with modern vector embeddings and LLM integration.

Swift Testing, Apple’s modern replacement for the aging XCTest framework, offers iOS developers a more expressive and Swift-native way to write tests. Unlike XCTest’s verbose assertion methods and rigid naming conventions, Swift Testing brings elegant new macros like #expect and #require, powerful organizational features through traits and tags, built-in support for parameterized tests that run in parallel, and seamless async/await integration—all while maintaining the familiar structure developers know but with significantly cleaner, more readable code. This comprehensive guide will walk you through everything from basic setup to advanced features, helping you write better tests with more clarity.

Designing complex data tables for mobile isn’t about shrinking desktop tables. It’s about rethinking structure for smaller screens. This post shares practical strategies for transforming complex tables into mobile-friendly formats without sacrificing usability. It covers prioritizing essential data, handling actions, simplifying UI, and optimizing performance for remote and low-bandwidth users.

Explain the what, and why, but not how; cover the edge cases; break or adapt templates where necessary.

PostgreSQL’s powerful query planner relies heavily on up-to-date table and column statistics to decide whether to use indexes or full-table scans for your queries. When these statistics become outdated—often after bulk updates or large data changes—Postgres can start making bad decisions, causing indexes to be ignored and query performance to drop sharply.