Articles

I’m a full-stack developer with leanings towards Laravel (TALL); as well as devops and automation. Most of these articles are published as a reference for myself, but if someone finds them useful, then great!

You can see the list of articles below, the tags; or use the search function below to see more.

Some things I want to learn and write about (even if it’s just for myself) in the future:

misc OAuth server and client
misc: ansible and other server maintenance things, i.e. motd and unattended-upgrades.
docker/k8s: rancher, heimdall, helm
misc: ceph, airflow, kafka, grafana, prometheus, dozzle, proxies, more..
traefik homelab

Create a GitHub workflow to run PHP linters, tests, and generate coverage report

Create and configure a GitHub workflow to run PHP QA tools (e.g. phplint, phpcs), and then run unit and feature tests (e.g. php artisan test, phpunit), and finally generate a code coverage report or some other artifact.

~8 minutes

laravel github phpunit

Published Mon, 05 Sep 2022 17:40

Send a templated WhatsApp message through Twilio in Laravel

Send a message template containing emoji from Twilio in Laravel.

~3 minutes

laravel whatsapp twilio

Published Tue, 30 Aug 2022 16:58

Consume raw SQS messages from another application with Laravel's queue

Easily consume arbitrary raw AWS SQS messages produced by another application in your Laravel application’s queue with a Job and queue configuration.

~4 minutes

laravel aws sqs

Published Sat, 27 Aug 2022 13:37

Setting up CI to build and release multiple sets of documentation from an OpenAPI spec

Learn how to set up a GitHub workflow to build documentation for a generated PHP SDK from multiple generators, and consolidate them all into a single gh-pages branch.

~8 minutes

github php openapi apigen doctum doxygen phpdoc taskfile

Published Fri, 26 Aug 2022 18:06

Headless screenshot of a chart in Laravel with Browsershot and S3 upload

Generate and save a blade component containing a Chart.js chart in Laravel (without controller bloat) using Browsershot, and then upload it to S3.

~7 minutes

laravel chartjs browsershot

Published Thu, 25 Aug 2022 15:00

Using Laravel's pipeline to replace CMS content placeholders with values

Use the Laravel Pipeline component with many Pipes to replace arbitrary placeholders in DOM with computed values using a Model’s accessor

~4 minutes

laravel pipeline

Published Thu, 25 Aug 2022 13:13

A Laravel middleware to optimise images with imgproxy on arbitrary markup

Create a Laravel middleware to parse the response DOM and update a set of img’s src to be routed through imgproxy.

~3 minutes

laravel imgproxy

Published Thu, 25 Aug 2022 12:22

Using whiptail to show the active git branch for a set of git repositories

List the active git branch for a set of git repositories in whiptail, then jump to the selected repository’s tmux window

~5 minutes

git tmux whiptail

Published Mon, 06 Jun 2022 20:18

Tailwind CSS Breakpoints in Google Chrome Device Toolbar

Setting up the Tailwind breakpoints by adding custom devices in Google Chrome’s device toolbar for easier testing.

~1 minute

tailwind tailwindcss

Published Fri, 27 May 2022 18:53

Building and hosting a full CI & CD containerised Laravel application

I’ve hosted many apps. I’ve set up CI to build containers. But I’ve never figured out the continuous deployment part, until now. I will use watchtower in a GitHub workflow to trigger the image update and restart the container.

~13 minutes

github ci cd traefik watchtower

Published Sat, 04 Dec 2021 12:00

Building an image for static site generator output

Bundling the generated output from a static site generator (e.g. hugo) into a simple static file server (e.g. caddy) for testing the build.

~2 minutes

hugo docker caddy

Published Mon, 12 Jul 2021 21:01

Quckie: git - copy a file from another branch without switching branch

Copy a file from another git branch without checking to that target branch.

~1 minute

git quickie

Published Mon, 21 Jun 2021 14:57

Laravel post migration event listener

Want your Laravel app to do something after running migrations? Here’s how I did it.

~3 minutes

laravel event migration post-migration

Published Thu, 17 Jun 2021 19:16

Making filled triangle SVG with CSS

Understanding basic SVG path and viewbox for a simple filled triangle.

~2 minutes

css svg

Published Tue, 18 May 2021 22:00

Connecting to a remote server with mc

Connect to a remote server with mc from command line (non-interactive).

~1 minute

Published Tue, 18 May 2021 17:26

MySQL query logging on Mac

Enabling MySQL query logging on Mac (without Docker).

~1 minute

mysql

Published Mon, 17 May 2021 17:54

Creating a fresh Laravel installation with Docker

A command I’ve used a few times to install a fresh Laravel project into the cwd’s src/ folder, leaving the cwd for your own README, Docker, Terraform, etc. files.

~1 minute

laravel docker php composer

Published Fri, 14 May 2021 19:28

Using Xdebug with Laravel Valet

Installing and configuring Xdebug with Laravel Valet.

~1 minute

xdebug valet

Published Tue, 02 Mar 2021 12:00

Some handy local development environment tools/services

A few tools (email, object storage, logging) to substitute compatible APIs from production environment for local development.

~10 minutes

laravel docker mailhog graylog minio terraform

Published Sat, 20 Feb 2021 12:00

A backend implementation for livewire/sortable

How to handle backend requests given from livewire/sortable. Data fetched in mount - think Posts by Users (as prop into Livewire component) under a Category (as prop into Livewire component), then sort order persisted during action and re-rendered seamlessly.

~2 minutes

php laravel livewire

Published Tue, 16 Feb 2021 00:00

Using webdevops/php-dev:7.x and configuring xDebug 3 for local development in PHPStorm

How to set up PHPStorm, and use webdevops/php-dev:7.x image using xdebubg v3.

~1 minute

php docker xdebug

Published Fri, 18 Dec 2020 12:00

Using Terraform to provision & configure infrastructure - AWS S3 website bucket hosting & Cloudflare DNS updates

Create an AWS S3 and corresponding CNAME in Cloudflare for static site hosting using ‘infrastructure as code’ using Terraform.

~8 minutes

aws s3 terraform cloudflare

Published Tue, 15 Dec 2020 00:00

UK place data - a database as a Docker image, with a pointless multi-stage build to transform and load data

A UK place name gazetteer loaded into a docker image with some spatial querying.

~5 minutes

mysql docker

Published Sun, 13 Dec 2020 12:00

Building a database as private Docker image with structure and data for CI

Building a private Docker image with custom structure and data, for a legacy app for a slightly easier CI pipeline.

~4 minutes

mysql docker ci

Published Tue, 08 Dec 2020 12:00

Standard JSON validation response in Laravel

Using failedValidation for standard JSON responses on validation error(s).

~4 minutes

php laravel

Published Tue, 17 Nov 2020 00:00

Single action Laravel controllers and FQCN in route definitions

Slim single action controllers and IDE friendly FQCN route definitions in Laravel.

~4 minutes

php laravel

Published Mon, 09 Nov 2020 00:00

PHP code analysis with Sonarqube in Docker

Code Quality and Security - SonarQube empowers all developers to write cleaner and safer code.

~2 minutes

php docker sonarqube

Published Sun, 08 Nov 2020 12:00

Changing semi-unstructured JSON data in a MySQL backing store to MongoDB

Moving our semi-unstructured data from a mysql database, stored in a json column to a mongodb instance for better performance.

~8 minutes

mongodb mysql csv

Published Sat, 12 Sep 2020 00:00

Querying an IP restricted API with Postman

Use a SOCKS proxy to query an IP restricted API with Postman.

~1 minute

proxy socks ssh postman

Published Fri, 11 Sep 2020 12:00

Github Actions: Build code-generated assets, create a release and attach those assets to the release

Automatically have Github Actions build some code-generated (binary) assets and attach to a release when a new tag is pushed.

~3 minutes

github git php tcpdf ci

Published Tue, 08 Sep 2020 12:00

Deploying a static site generators build to an S3 bucket using CI with Bitbucket pipelines

Automatically have Bitbucket CI build a static site and move the built into a production or staging bucket depending on the branch.

~8 minutes

nuxt s3 bitbucket ci cloudflare

Published Mon, 07 Sep 2020 12:00

PHP environment for Codewars Kata challenges

Relatively barebones PHP environment for Codewars Kata challenges, with xdebug.

~3 minutes

docker php xdebug kcachegrind

Published Mon, 31 Aug 2020 00:00

Publish messages to RabbitMQ for a worker to process later

Publish messages to a RabbitMQ instance using PHP. Build a PHP consumer to process messages in the background with supervisord.

~9 minutes

docker php rabbitmq supervisord

Published Sun, 30 Aug 2020 00:00

Using Ghost as Headless CMS in a Laravel Site

How you might integrate content written in a Ghost Blog into a Laravel site using its Content API.

~8 minutes

php laravel ghost

Published Sat, 29 Aug 2020 00:00

S3 Database Dump Sync For Local Development

A simple whiptail script to select which databases you want to refresh for local development work. Downloads using awscli and some pv for progress on decompressing and importing.

~2 minutes

aws s3 bash whiptail

Published Thu, 16 Jul 2020 12:00