Pragmatism in the real world

2016 in pictures

Another year has passed which gives me an excuse to to reflect on what's happened. As usual, I look at the photos that I've taken and frame my thoughts around them. January At the very end of January I visited Phoenix, Arizona to see Evan, Priscilla & other friends. I also attended FOSDEM again and spent a tourist day in Brussels. February I was fortunate enough to speak at PHPUK again in February. March The… continue reading.

SSH keys in macOS Sierra

Now that I've upgraded to macOS 10.12 Sierra, I noticed that SSH required me to enter my passphrase to keys every time I used them. This was a surprise as it's not how 10.11 El Capitan worked. This is how to fix it. Firstly, add your SSH key's passphrase to the keychain using ssh-add -K ~/.ssh/id_rsa (or any other key file). You can now use your SSH key without re-typing the password all the time… continue reading.

Handling JSON data errors in Slim 3

When you send JSON data into a Slim Framework application with a content-type of application/json, then Slim will decode it for you if you use getParsedBody(): $app->post("/", function ($request, $response, $args) { $input = $request->getParsedBody(); var_dump($input);exit; }); Using curl to test: $ curl -H "Content-Type: application/json" http://localhost:8888 -d '{"foo": "bar"}' array(1) { 'foo' => string(3) "bar" } If there's an error however, you get this: $ curl -H "Content-Type: application/json" http://localhost:8888 -d '{foo: bar}' NULL… continue reading.

Use curl to create a CouchDB admin user

This too me longer to find than it should have done, so I'm writing it here for future me. When you install CouchDB, it is in a mode where anyone can do anything with the database including creating and deleting databases. This is called "Admin Party" mode which is a pretty cool name, but not what I want. Creating admin users To create a user in 1.6 (I've not used 2.0 yet, but assuming it's… continue reading.

PHPNW 2016 API Tutorial

If you're attending my Building Modern APIs in PHP tutorial at PHPNW 2016, please bring a laptop with the following installed: * PHP 7 with the sqlite extension installed * curl command line tool * https://akrabat.com/stuff/2016-09-30-PHPNW-Slim-API-Tutorial.zip extracted to a convenient directory Thanks. I'm looking forward to it and hope you are too! Oh, and if you don't have an ticket yet, they are still available.

On respect in the workplace

I recently came across Don’t be that dude: Handy tips for the male academic, an article covering 20 actions that the author identified as things that men do everyday to perpetuate inequality. A number seem specific to the academic world, but the majority are relevant everywhere. Now, 20 items is a lot to remember, so I want to call out a few that I see regularly when I'm in offices and at conferences. They are… continue reading.

Hide the ST3 sidebar automatically

As a mostly keyboard user, I take advantage of the keyboard shortcuts in Sublime Text. However, the sidebar is quite a lot of effort to manage, especially as I mostly leave it closed. Firstly, you need cmd+k,cmd+b to open it. Then you type ctrl+k,ctrl+0 to focus it as opening it doesn't automatically set focus. Then you can navigate to the file you want and open it via pressing return. Finally, you type cmd+k,cmd+b to close… continue reading.

Using CharlesProxy's root SSL with home-brew curl

Once I installed Homebrew's curl for HTTP/2 usage, I discovered that I couldn't automatically proxy SSL through Charles Proxy any more. $ export HTTPS_PROXY=https://localhost:8888 $ curl https://api.joind.in/v2.1/ curl: (60) SSL certificate problem: self signed certificate in certificate chain More details here: https://curl.haxx.se/docs/sslcerts.html curl performs SSL certificate verification by default, using a "bundle" of Certificate Authority (CA) public keys (CA certs). If the default bundle file isn't adequate, you can specify an alternate file using the… continue reading.

Using HTTP/2 with PHP 7 on Mac

if you want to use HTTP/2 with PHP on OS X, you need a version of curl compiled with HTTP/2 support. You can then link your PHP's curl extension to this version. The easiest way to do this is to use Homebrew: $ brew install openssl $ brew install curl –with-nghttp2 $ brew install php70 –with-homebrew-curl At the time of writing, this will install PHP 7.0.10 with Curl 7.50.1: $ php -i | grep cURL… continue reading.

RESTful APIs and media-types

Evert Pot recently posted REST is in the eye of the beholder. Go ahead and read it; it's good! It discusses the fact that most APIs that are self-described as RESTful are not hypermedia driven and hence are not actually RESTful as originally defined by Roy Fielding. Evert goes on to state that therefore the term "REST API" has changed to mean an HTTP API that isn't hypermedia-driven. I think that what the world currently… continue reading.