October is our favorite month of the year because it brings with it Hacktoberfest, the largest celebration of open source in the world! And this year, we returned to support DigitalOcean and Hacktoberfest 2022 as a sponsor to invest in the upliftment of the open-source world. Hacktoberfest brought with it moments of nostalgia seeing developers from different walks of life join in to take their first steps in the open-source world .

We had an absolute blast interacting with all the new contributors and hosting all the events throughout the month! Our YouTube livestreams saw some amazing speakers and open-source projects, and our Discord server was full of AMAs and PR Review parties! The PR Review Parties enabled us to demonstrate our PR review workflow and allowed the community to really appreciate the work that goes into maintaining open-source projects. We were also able to educate new contributors on various facets of open source, usage of tools like Git and GitHub, the process of submitting a PR, communication best practices, and so much more! Not only did we see multiple virtual events, but we also hosted our very first in-person meetup in Bengaluru, India. Overall, this Hacktoberfest was one of the most wholesome and fulfilling experiences for our team, and we cannot wait to share our highlights from this edition .

Our History With Hacktoberfest

Before we jump into some amazing open-source contributions from Hacktoberfest this year, we would love to share why our participation in Hacktoberfest matters far more to us than we can express. Appwrite was first released back in September 2019 with one simple goal, make software development a lot less complex. Hacktoberfest 2019 was truly a game-changer for us, as we saw over 200 contributions from some lovely members of the open-source fraternity that October. The stars on our project doubled that month and entered the 4-digit range for the very first time .

That one month truly enabled us to lay the foundations of a budding organization with the sole purpose of helping developers build faster and better. And for that, no thank-yous will ever be enough to express our gratitude for this amazing open source community that chose to carry us on their shoulders at our inception. This year, as sponsors of Hacktoberfest, we set out with the mission to uplift the ever-growing open source community and enable more newcomers to step in and grow in this ecosystem .

Some Of Our Favorite Contributions

We saw lots of amazing contributions from our community members throughout Hacktoberfest. Some of them really stood out to us, and we thought to share them here for you to check out too!

• Hazelcast Caching Adapter

  Hazelcast Adpater added, closes #3973 #28

  

  kaggrwal posted on Oct 18, 2022

  Hazelcast Adpater added, closes #issue

  View on GitHub

• Snappy Compression Adapter

  Add snappy compression #4336

  

  shtelzerartem posted on Oct 08, 2022

  What does this PR do?

  Adds Snappy compression adapter

  Test Plan

  Added 2 tests for Snappy compression similarly to ZSTD, both passed tests

  

  

  • [x] testCreateBucketFileSnappyCompression
  • [x] testFilePreviewSnappyCompression

  Related PRs and Issues

  Resolves #4002Relates to my second PR #4002-utopia-php

  Have you read the Contributing Guidelines on issues?

  Yep :)

  View on GitHub

• WhatsApp Authentication (via 360dialog)

  Feat phone auth 360dialog #4536

  

  aakashcodess posted on Oct 19, 2022

  What does this PR do?

  This PR will add phone authentication with whatsapp using 360dialog.

  Test Plan

  To test you have to create a phoneSession.To test you should have a live 360dialog api or it can be tested with 360dialog sandbox apiIn .env file_APP_SMS_PROVIDER = sms://template_name:api_key@dialog360_APP_PHONE_FROM = template_namespace

  Related PRs and Issues

  NO

  Have you added your change to the Changelog?

  N0

  Have you read the Contributing Guidelines on issues?

  Yes

  View on GitHub

• Perl Runtime for Appwrite Functions

  [feat] Add Runtime for Perl 5.36 #95

  

  sudiptog81 posted on Oct 03, 2022

  Add runtime support for Perl in order to support Perl functions.

  Closes https://github.com/appwrite/appwrite/issues/4014.

  View on GitHub

• Documentation Updates in Kotlin Server SDK

  Doc updates for Kotlin #582

  

  nothendev posted on Oct 21, 2022

  What does this PR do?

  This PR provides extensive documentation and kotlin-friendly refactors in the Kotlin Server template.

  Test Plan

  I have only changed the documentation or changed an empty class with a companion object to just an object, so it will work without any changes to the code.

  Related PRs and Issues

  (If this PR is related to any other PR or resolves any issue or related to any issue link all related PR and issues here.)None.

  Have you read the Contributing Guidelines on issues?

  Yes, I have.

  View on GitHub

• URL Shortener Appwrite Function in Ruby

  Write a generateShortUrl() Function using Ruby #39

  

  Platiplus posted on Oct 04, 2022

  Github Ticket

  Closes APPWRITE-4189

  Description

  This PR adds an example function for generating a short URL using different providers.The currently supported providers are:

  • Bitly
  • TinyURL

  Screenshots

  Success Bitly

  

  Success TinyURL

  

  Error Bitly

  

  Error TinyURL

  

  View on GitHub

Milestones Achieved So Far

Together we made a lot of noise during Hacktoberfest, and it led to some amazing results for the Appwrite community!

• 140+ Pull Requests
• 140 new GitHub contributors
• About 40 tutorials and demo apps
• 100+ new Functions examples
• Over 300 Hacktoberfest issues
• 15+ Hacktoberfest events

All these achievements were made possible through the strong collaboration and active participation of the community through a variety of contributions, spanning adapters and demo functions, as well as articles, tutorials, and more!

Whats Next For Appwrite

We have a lot of exciting features that were working towards as we gear up for the 1st version of the Appwrite Cloud . Appwrite Cloud will be a hosted Appwrite solution managed by our team so developers like you can focus on building their applications. Were getting closer to the Beta launch of Appwrite Cloud, so sign up for early access as soon as you can!

As some of you may already know, we are developing a fresh, new Appwrite Console . The revamped Appwrite console, featuring our new upcoming design system, adds a more simplified user interface for all the different services across Appwrite. As a part of our Hacktoberfest initiative, we conducted usability tests with various community members and designers to gain feedback. In a nutshell, the Appwrite Console will be leaner, cleaner, and more accessible than before, and we cant wait to get it out!

How Can You Contribute After Hacktoberfest?

Hacktoberfest may be over, but you dont have to stop contributing! We have lots of open issues that you can find on our GitHub repo. Moreover, many of our Hacktoberfest issues are still open for assignment! You can also write articles, create tutorials, or build demo apps and add them to our Awesome Appwrite repo. There are always new ways to support the community, and we truly love all the contributions you make. If you need help with Appwrite or would like to explore some interesting ways to contribute, join us on our Discord server and connect with the Appwrite community .

Thank you so much once again for joining us during Hacktoberfest. We hope you enjoyed contributing to open source as much as we do, and we cant wait to have you all with us next year!