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:

Private Github Readme Stats server and uploading to S3 with Ansible Semaphore
Containerise a private Github Readme Stats server and upload stats card image to S3 using an Ansible playbook on a schedule with Semaphore
~3 minutes
github-readme-stats docker ansible semaphore
Published:

Use git feature to 'hide' local changes of a Dockerfile which installs xdebug
Use git update-index --assume-unchanged to remove local changes of a Dockerfile from the staging area in a repository, and use (an ignored) docker-compose.override.yml to configure xdebug.
~3 minutes
docker xdebug git
Published:

Basic Cognito user pool with login/logout integration in Laravel, with users/system clients
A relatively basic Laravel integration with an Amazon Cognito user pool with two clients. The first client for web users will be used to initiate (from Laravel) login/logout on Cognito’s hosted UI with email/password. The second client will be for system users, which will generate tokens with email/password through API instead of hosted UI. Finally, a simple console command to decode/verify web and system users’ JTWs from the user pool’s JWKS.
~23 minutes
laravel cognito terraform
Published:

Adding asynchronous search to a hugo blog
Learn how to add asynchronous search to a hugo blog with alpine.js and fuse.
~7 minutes
hugo alpine fuse
Published:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

Making filled triangle SVG with CSS
Understanding basic SVG path and viewbox for a simple filled triangle.
~2 minutes
css svg
Published:

Connecting to a remote server with mc
Connect to a remote server with mc from command line (non-interactive).
~1 minute
mc
Published:

MySQL query logging on Mac
Enabling MySQL query logging on Mac (without Docker).
~1 minute
mysql
Published:

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:

Using Xdebug with Laravel Valet
Installing and configuring Xdebug with Laravel Valet.
~1 minute
xdebug valet
Published:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

Standard JSON validation response in Laravel
Using failedValidation for standard JSON responses on validation error(s).
~4 minutes
php laravel
Published:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

PHP environment for Codewars Kata challenges
Relatively barebones PHP environment for Codewars Kata challenges, with xdebug.
~3 minutes
docker php xdebug kcachegrind
Published:

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:

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:

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:

Scraping legacy static sites and hosting them (yuck!)
This was hell. Just an excuse to save some handy wget, ssh, find, csvtool, xargs, commands and other occasionally useful things, honestly.
~5 minutes
php wget csv httpd cloudflare
Published:

Basic PDF manipulation tools with zenity, pdftk, and gs
Basic scripts for dealing with PDF in my job - converting, cutting and catting - throwing some zenity around gs and pdftk.
~4 minutes
pdf bash zenity pdftk gs
Published:

Apache httpd Server Configuration Hardening
Some tips I picked up to make sites hosted on Apache httpd servers more secure.
~5 minutes
httpd
Published:

A nicer, more efficient terminal experience with tmux and tmuxinator.
Friendship ended with terminator, now tmux is my best friend.
~3 minutes
tmux
Published:

Integrating Some PHP QA Tools
How you can integrate some PHP QA tools in your project, and guard your project with git hooks.
~7 minutes
php docker bash git make
Published:

Developing in PHP with Docker: one nginx ingress to isolated httpd & php containers
One ingress nginx reverse proxy to multiple php:apache containers with different (XDebug) configurations.
~9 minutes
docker nginx apache httpd php xdebug mysql
Published:

Server checklist with whiptail and logger.
An interactive CLI for logging server audits in bash with whiptail and logger.
~3 minutes
bash whiptail logger
Published:
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