Pragmatism in the real world

Password less command line scripts with MySQL 5.6

I have a number of command line scripts that copy MySQL databases down from staging servers and store them locally. These scripts set the password on the command line using the -p option. With MySQL 5.6, a new warning is displayed every time my scripts run: Warning: Using a password on the command line interface can be insecure. This is annoying! The way to solve this is to use the new command line tool mysql_config_editor… continue reading.

Setting the umask when using Capistrano

This is one of those posts to remind me how I solved a problem last time! I've recently been using Capistrano for deployment and other remote tasks and it's proving quite useful. One problem I ran into was that the umask was being set to 022 when using Capistrano and 002 when I was ssh'd into the server itself. After a bit of research, I discovered that the secret is to put the umask statement… continue reading.

Objects in the model layer

I currently use a very simple set of core objects within my model layer: entities, mappers and service objects. Entities are objects that represent something in my business logic. For example, in my traditional Album's tutorial, the entity would be the object that holds one album. It has properties such as title, artist and date created and methods that are specific to this entity. Mappers know how to save and load an entity from the… continue reading.

The watch Linux command line tool

I'm sure everyone else already knows about watch, but it's new to me. This little utility executes a program repeatedly at a set interval and displays its output. I've been using it with mysqladmin's processlist command like this: watch -n 1 /usr/bin/mysqladmin -uroot -pMYPASSWORD processlist Note that this does put your password on display at the top of the command window whilst watch is running. If you don't want that, you could write a little… continue reading.