Pragmatism in the real world

Inserting binary data into SQL Server with ZF1 & PHP 7

If you want to insert binary data into SQL Server in Zend Framework 1 then you probably used the trick of setting an array as the parameter's value with the info required by the sqlsrv driver as noted in Some notes on SQL Server blobs with sqlsrv. Essentially you do this; $data['filename'] = 'test.gif'; $data["file_contents"] = array( $binaryData, SQLSRV_PARAM_IN, SQLSRV_PHPTYPE_STREAM(SQLSRV_ENC_BINARY), SQLSRV_SQLTYPE_VARBINARY('max') ); $db->insert($data); Where $db is an instance of Zend_Db_Adapter_Sqlsrv. If you use SQL Server… continue reading.

Autocomplete Composer script names on the command line

As I add more and more of my own script targets to my composer.json files, I find that it would be helpful to have tab autocomplete in bash. I asked on Twitter and didn't get an immediate solution and as I had already done something similar for Phing, I rolled up my sleeves and wrote my own. Start by creating a new bash completion file called composer in the bash_completion.d directory. This file needs executable… continue reading.

Switching OpenWhisk environments

When developing with OpenWhisk, it's useful to use separate environments for working locally or on the cloud for development, staging and production of your application. In OpenWhisk terms, this means setting the host and the API key for your wsk command line application. $ wsk property set –apihost $host –auth $key (Of course, for live and staging, ideally, you will be using a build server!) For a Vagrant install of OpenWhisk, the host is 192.168.33.13… continue reading.

POSTing data using KituraNet

I had a need to send a POST request with a JSON body from Swift and as I had KituraNet and SwiftyJSON already around, it proved to reasonably easy. To send a POST request using KituraNet, I wrote this code: let url = "http://httpbin.org/post". // Change to the actual URL let dataToSend = ["foo": ["bar": "baz"]] // Change to the actual data // body needs to be of type Data, use SwiftyJSON to convert let… continue reading.

Using CircleCI for a PHP project

For a new client project, I've decided to use CircleCI to run my tests every time I push to GitHub. This turned out to be quite easy; this is how I did it. I started by creating a config file, .circleci/config.yml containing the following: version: 2 jobs: build: working_directory: /var/www/html docker: – image: php:7.1-apache environment: APP_ENV: test steps: – run: name: Install system packages command: apt-get update && apt-get -y install git – run: name:… continue reading.

Automatically converting PDF to Keynote

I use rst2pdf to create presentations which provides me with a PDF file. When it comes to presenting on stage, on Linux there are tools such as pdfpc and on Mac there's Keynote. Keynote doesn't read PDF files by default, so we have to convert them and the tool I use for this is Melissa O'Neill's PDF to Keynote. This is a GUI tool, so I manually create the Keynote file when I need it… continue reading.

Detecting OpenWhisk web actions

I've already written about OpenWhisk web actions and how they allow you to send a status code and HTTP headers to the client by returning a dictionary with the keys status, headers and body from your main() method: func main(args: [String:Any]) -> [String:Any] { return [ "body": "Hello world", "statusCode": 200, "headers": [ "Content-Type": "text/xml", ], ] } If this test action is in the default namespace, then we create it with wsk action update… continue reading.

Calling an OpenWhisk action in Swift

As OpenWhisk is a Functions as a Service system, it makes sense to create actions that do one thing and call other actions when they want other work done. As an example, in DrinksChooser, the choose action calls the incrementDrinkCount action which increments the count of the recommended drink in Redis. This way, choose doesn't have to know anything about Redis as that's not its job. In OpenWhisk's Swift environment, there's the Whisk.invoke() method to… continue reading.

Passing secrets to your OpenWhisk action

There is only one way to pass data into your OpenWhisk action: parameters. Your function receives a dictionary of parameters and returns one. Let's explore how you can set these parameters. Parameters passed to the action You can see this by creating this action: test.swift func main(args: [String:Any]) -> [String:Any] { return args } Add the action to OpenWhisk with: wsk action update params params.swift -a web-export true and test: $ wsk action invoke -b… continue reading.

Quick tip: OpenWhisk autocompletion

I've just discovered how to enable Bash autocompletion for the wsk command line tool! $ cd /usr/local/bin $ wsk sdk install bashauto This will create a file called wsk_cli_bash_completion.sh in your /usr/local/bin directory. Now, source this file within your .bash_profile or equivalent: $ echo -e "\n# OpenWhisk autocompletion\nsource ~/bin/wsk_cli_bash_completion.sh" >> ~/.bash_profile Start a new terminal window, (or source ~/.bash_profile in your current one) and you can now press the tab key after typing wsk to… continue reading.