Contributor spotlight: Luca Di Fazio

For an open-source project, the community plays a major role in building innovative products. No matter the form the contribution takes, feedback, code contribution, bug reports, or word of mouth, Mockoon wouldn't be what it has become without all of you. We started this series of interviews to put some more light on the contributors who spent time crafting features or fixing bugs for the benefit of all. Today, we are talking with Luca Di Fazio, who shares his enthusiasm for contributing to and using Mockoon.

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 Can you introduce yourself and your background in software development, your passions or hobbies?

Hi, I’m Luca (@HighLiuk). I got a PhD in mathematics, then changed my life to become a developer, which I really enjoy. I work at Idearia (Rome) as a full-stack developer, mostly on PHP (WordPress, Laravel) and JS frontend frameworks (Vue, Svelte).
Everything I know about coding I learned self-taught (mainly on YouTube). I enjoy cooking, Japanese, and board games. I also work on side projects in my spare time related to my hobbies and focused on mobile development.

 How long have you been using Mockoon? Are there any particular contributions you've made that you'd like to emphasize or showcase?

I became aware of Mockoon a couple of years ago, thanks to a video by CoderOne, but I started using it only a year ago. And I found it extremely useful. I love how easily you can customize the response with templates and the Faker.js integration.
I recently contributed to Mockoon via a pull request to add a search and filter functionality to CRUD routes.

 What inspired you to contribute to a project like Mockoon and open-source in general?

Mockoon is an amazing software. The first time I tried it, it blew my mind, but then I realized that some features that were essential to the project I was working on, were not supported. Then on GitHub, I noticed an open issue about it, and it was in the roadmap too. I had an idea on how to implement it, so I stepped forward and I was given the opportunity to contribute.
So far I've always taken the same strategy with open-source contributions, but Mockoon is definitely the biggest project I’ve had the chance to help out a bit.

 How do you balance your contributions with other commitments? Are your open-source contributions part of your work (as an employee)?

I contribute to open-source projects occasionally, in my spare time and not as part of my work. Most of the time, I just need to fork to tweak something, and that’s how I start my contributions. Working on my own is not always the best strategy so, I enjoy sharing thoughts on GitHub discussions, issues, and pull requests.

 What general advice would you give to someone interested in contributing to open-source projects?

You should not be eager to contribute to open-source projects. If you use open-source software a lot, sooner or later you will come across a project that lacks a feature you would like or has a bug that is critical to your needs. If the opportunity arises, seize it: it will be easier for you to be able to contribute to something that you need and that you are looking forward to becoming real.

 Has your involvement with open source contributed to your growth as a developer or your career?

I work in a small company, and there are not many of us, so the people I deal with are always the same. With open-source it's different: each project has its own maintainer and there are a lot of contributors, so there are always many chances to compare with other people so that I can grow and improve more and more through the exchange of innovative ideas. This definitely contributes to my personal growth as a developer since you can always learn something new.

 What makes Mockoon unique compared to other API mocking tools? Can you share some key features or functionalities that you find particularly useful?

First of all, the UI. This makes it stand out significantly from tools such as JSON Server. It also shines in the fact that it requires no setup to get up and running, compared to tools like Mirage.js or MSW.
It just… works!
What I enjoy most about Mockoon is definitely the fact that you can customize the response with a template language with loads of functionalities. The response may not be JSON at all, too. It can be whatever you need, as long as you can write the right template. This makes Mockoon extremely flexible compared to other solutions out there.

 Have you integrated Mockoon into any specific projects or workflows, and if so, how has it improved or streamlined those processes?

Yes, I did. If I need to mock an API in a development environment, my choice is definitely Mockoon.
You can get it up and running with ease, so everything is streamlined. Sometimes I use Mockoon at work and it was nice to show it to my colleagues as well.

 What are your favorite tools or resources for software development outside of Mockoon?

I think Laravel outperforms every other Full Stack framework out there, though I like the Node.js and TypeScript communities a lot. For mobile development, I love Flutter, and I wouldn't trade it for anything else. For front-end development, I love Vite. I also like tools like Storybook and XState, which greatly improve my developer experience.

 Is there anything else you'd like to share with the Mockoon community, a personal project or an interesting read?

In my spare time, I work on a personal project. It’s a mobile app made with Flutter whose purpose is learning Japanese by reading your favorite manga. It’s (almost) completely offline, you just upload the PDF, and the app scans the pages with Text Detection and OCR models so it can generate tappable regions with detected text plus translations. It also tokenizes the sentences by splitting words (Japanese has no white space to separate them) so you can even search them on your favorite mobile dictionary with a tap, or translate them with your favorite mobile translation app.
I learned a lot of things about deep learning models and a lot about mobile programming as well since I usually work on web projects and I have no working experience with mobile apps or training deep learning models.
This app is not open-source today, but I think I will make it open-source someday. In the meantime, if you are interested you can message me on Discord (my username is highliuk_).

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We thank Luca for sharing his journey with us. We are grateful he chose to dedicate his time and talent to improving projects like Mockoon, making it an indispensable tool for developers worldwide.

More interviews are in the pipeline. Be sure not to miss any by subscribing to our newsletter or joining our Discord server. Happy mocking!