LOG 202411252350 #log

building moxie (marketo form tester)

a few days ago i dove headfirst into building another tool 😅 that my team could use. we're currently manually testing marketo forms, which if you've ever worked with marketo, you know is about as fun as watching paint dry. except the paint keeps changing colors when you're not looking, and sometimes it just decides to not dry at all.

i started messing with playwright for browser automation, and before i knew it, i had a pretty solid foundation for something that could actually make our lives easier. you know how it goes - you start with a "this should be simple enough" and end up with a full-stack application that'll actually solve real problems.

the backend is running on express.js (cause claude made me) with postgresql and drizzle orm handling the data. the frontend is react with typescript because, and i can't stress this enough, claude made me do it to debug form submission data with type safety 🙄 we're also using some components from shadcn/ui - like lego pieces, and i'm all about not reinventing the wheel when i don't have to.

the vision is pretty sweet - it'll discover form fields automatically, fill them with test data, and keep an eye on whether the submission actually made it through to salesforce. kind of like having a really eager intern who never gets tired of filling out forms and checking if they worked. except this intern runs in the browser and doesn't need coffee breaks.

i've got the teams integration ready to go for notifications because our marketing team lives there, and once everything's connected, it should be a game-changer for our workflow. no more endless "did that form submission go through?" messages - everyone will just get a notification when something breaks or when a test completes.

right now i'm in that fun stage where the foundation is solid but i'm waiting on sfdc credentials from is to really bring it all together. you know how it goes with enterprise permissions - hurry up and wait. but that's giving me time to make the base more robust, adding better error handling, and planning out some more advanced testing scenarios.

i've got this idea of it eventually being part of our deployment pipeline, catching form issues before they ever hit production. but first things first - gotta get those credentials and get the basic flow working. one feature at a time, and there's always something new to add to the todo list.

i actually built this with a lot of the same patterns i used in my watch in order project - especially around tracking state and activity. it's funny how building something to track tv episodes ended up informing part of how i track form submissions at work. everything builds on everything else, ig.

if anyone's curious about the tech stack or wants to geek out about marketing automation testing, hit me up. i'm always down to chat about building tools, even if they're for something as mundane as form testing.

for now, back to building. these forms aren't going to test themselves... well, actually, they will soon. but you know what i mean. 😉✌️