Building the NextGen Finance Feed — Part 1: From Development to Documentation

Building the NextGen Finance Feed — Part 1: From Development to Documentation

Software projects are not just about writing code — they are about creating a complete ecosystem of requirements, development, deployment, testing, and documentation.

Over the past month, I’ve been working on my portfolio project: NextGen Finance Feed. It’s a web application that aggregates real-time financial news for companies in the Nifty 50 (India) and S&P 500 (US).

In this article, I’ll walk through how I built and documented the system, the challenges I faced, and what comes next in testing.

GitHub Repository

The full project is open-source and available here:

NextGen Finance Feed on GitHub

It includes:

• Modular PHP/MySQL codebase
• Admin panel for managing companies and news
• API integration with Brave Search API (news) & Hugging Face Transformers API (summarization)
• Deployed version on InfinityFree for public access

Software Requirements & Interface Specification

Before writing a single line of code, I created a Software Interface Specification Document (SISD).

Read the SISD on Google Drive

This document includes:

• Introduction & Scope of the project
• Functional Requirements (Company listings, news aggregation, news presentation, automation via cron jobs)
• Non-functional Requirements (Performance, scalability, security, usability)
• Technical Stack (PHP, MySQL, Brave API, Hugging Face API, InfinityFree hosting)
• Future Enhancements (user accounts, watchlists, mobile app, AI sentiment analysis)

Just like in industry, having an SRS/SISD ensures the project is planned and traceable.

Fun fact: Projects that start with clear documentation are far more likely to succeed and be maintainable over time.

Real-World Challenges

Even small projects teach valuable lessons:

1. Platform Compatibility & Responsiveness

Web applications must work smoothly across all browsers and devices. Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and legacy browsers each have quirks that can break features or cause layout issues. Extensive cross-browser testing and UI refinements are essential.

2. Security & Data Protection

Financial news and API integrations raise complex security concerns. Preventing SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), and ensuring encrypted user data are non-negotiable, especially as the site grows. Regular code reviews and audits help spot vulnerabilities.

3. Scalability

As traffic or data grows, ensuring the infrastructure doesn’t buckle under pressure is critical. Optimizing database queries, using caching, and monitoring usage must be continuous practices to keep the site fast and reliable.

4. Performance Optimization

Users expect quick access to news, especially on mobile. Slow-loading pages drive users away. Minifying scripts, compressing images, and implementing caching/CDNs have improved speed considerably.

5. Integration of Third-Party APIs

APIs change, limit usage, or introduce breaking updates. Errors in external services must never crash the user experience; robust error handling keeps things running even when APIs misbehave.

6. Database Quality & Migration

Managing growing data and evolving schemas can lead to data corruption or performance drops if not planned well. Routine backups and migration scripts are necessary for reliability and future features.

7. Documentation Gaps

As code rapidly evolves, documentation can fall behind. Regularly updating SISD and code comments ensures maintainability and transparency for future contributors.

8. Usability and Accessibility

It takes continuous testing to deliver a user-friendly, accessible interface for everyone, including users with disabilities and across all devices. Adhering to standards like WCAG ensures legal compliance and a wider audience.

9. Standardizing Development & Deployment

With changing requirements or contributors, keeping the dev process predictable and standardized is vital. Establishing clear routines for code reviews, deployment, and testing avoids chaos and improves project quality.

1 Character Encoding Glitch (UTF-8)

Initially, my news headlines displayed weird symbols like �. This was because MySQL defaulted to latin1, while my site used UTF-8.

✅ Fix: I enforced UTF-8 everywhere using:

$this->conn->set_charset("utf8mb4");

Now, special characters display correctly across the site.

2 FTP Deployment Failures on InfinityFree

When deploying via FileZilla, the default FTP host ftpupload.net often went down. Checking on UpDownToday confirmed intermittent outages.

Fix: Switching to ftp.epizy.com (or direct IP 185.27.134.11) and enabling Passive Mode stabilized uploads.

This was a reminder that infrastructure is as important as code.

Walkthrough of the Application

Frontend (Public Website)

The frontend is what any visitor sees when they open NextGen Finance Feed:

• Home Page → Shows aggregated financial news across companies.
• Company Pages → Dedicated pages for each company in the Nifty 50 (India).
• News Summaries → Articles are fetched via the Brave Search API and summarized using the Hugging Face Transformers API.
• Static Pages → About, Privacy, Contact (with email form).
• User Features → Visitors can Sign Up / Sign In to personalize their experience (validation fixes planned).

Note: Currently, only Nifty 50 news is fetched. Due to the 5,000 monthly request limit on the Brave API’s free tier, I had to restrict queries. Support for S&P 500 companies is planned once I either upgrade API usage or optimize query patterns.

The goal of the frontend is to make financial news accessible, responsive, and easy to browse — even on mobile devices.

🔹 Admin Panel (Back Office)

The Admin Panel is the control center for managing the site:

• Manage Companies → View companies.Add,edit delete will be added later
• Sync News → Trigger PHP scripts that fetch the latest Nifty 50 news.
• Database Control → Ensure company and article data is stored correctly.
• Future Potential → Extendable to analytics, moderation, and watchlists.

In short:

• Frontend = built for end users (news readers).
• Admin Panel = built for system control (data and content managers).

GitHub Repository & Live Site

The full project is open-source and available here:

• GitHub Repo → NextGen Finance Feed
• Live Website → NextGen Finance Feed (InfinityFree Deployment)
• SRS/SISD Document → Google Drive Link

What’s Next: Testing & QA

With development and documentation complete, the next phase is quality assurance. In Part 2 of this series, I will:

• Write a Test Strategy & Test Cases Document
• Start manual testing (reporting real bugs like missing validation on Sign In/Sign Up forms)
• Move toward automation:
• Using Selenium + Java (TestNG) for UI tests
• Automating bug tickets & regression cycles

This staged approach mirrors real-world QA practice: test manually → report bugs → automate repeatable flows.

Takeaway

A software project is more than just code:

• GitHub Repo → the implementation
• SRS → the blueprint
• Deployment → making it usable
• Testing & QA → ensuring quality

By documenting every step, I’m treating this as if it were a professional product.

Try the live version here: NextGen Finance Feed (InfinityFree)

Stay tuned for Part 2: Testing NextGen Finance Feed where I’ll dive into test planning, bug reporting, and automation.