Pragmatism in the real world

Setting HTTP status code based on Exception in Slim 4

One thing that's quite convenient is to be able to throw an exception with a valid HTTP code set and have that code sent to the client. For example, you may have: throw new \RuntimeException("Not Found", 404); With the standard Slim 4 error handler, this response is sent to the client: $ curl -i -H "Accept:application/json" http://localhost:8888 HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error Host: localhost:8888 Content-type: application/json { "message": "Slim Application Error" } Ideally we want… continue reading.

A few Git tips

I don't do that much that's clever with git, but I've found the following helpful. Automatically prune When you do a git fetch or git pull, you can ask it to remove remote tracking branches for a branch that has been removed on the remote by using the –prune flag. This can be automated globally with: git config –global fetch.prune true and if you only want it for a specific repository, you can use: git… continue reading.

OpenConnect on Mac

One of my clients has recently moved to AnyConnect VPN and I've been having routing problems with the official Mac client. As my colleagues on Linux on the project have not had these issues, I investigated and installed the OpenConnect client. These are my notes after scouring the Internet to set it up how I want it. Installation I used Homebrew: $ brew install openconnect OpenConnect is a CLI tool. If you want a GUI… continue reading.

Dependency injection in Serverless PHP with Bref

When writing PHP for AWS Lambda, Bref is the way to do it. One thing I like about Bref is that you can use PSR-15 Request Handlers to respond to API Gateway HTTP events as documented in the API Gateway HTTP events section of the Bref docs. The request handler is the same as used in PSR-7 micro-frameworks like Slim or Mezzio and can be thought of as a controller action. As such, it's really… continue reading.

MailTrackerBlocker

One thing that has annoyed me about receiving email is so-called tracker pixels. These usually 1x1px transparent images that are remotely loaded into HTML email enable the sender to track information about be. A good resource about them is No To Spy Pixels. As such I've tended to run my email clients with remote resource loading disabled, which isn't the best experience as a surprising number of legitimate email even display the call-to-action link as… continue reading.

Keyboard control of Big Sur notification alerts

With the release of Big Sur, my scripts for keyboard control of macOS notification alerts stopped working. With a bit of experimentation and help from Google, I have written new ones. Closing an alert To close a notification alert on Big Sur, conceptually we want to press the X button that appears when you hover over it. The AppleScript to do this is: activate application "NotificationCenter" tell application "System Events" tell process "NotificationCenter" set theWindow… continue reading.

2020 in Pictures

As we reach the end of 2020, I continue my tradition of looking back at my year through the photos that I took as I have done every year since 2009. I have been doing a Project 365 for a good few years which acts as a diary too, so I have the opportunity to appreciate what happened this year in my life. This has been quite a year with the pandemic hitting the UK… continue reading.

Add Apple Watch authentication to sudo

Note: This article was written in for Intel Macs (not Apple Silicon) that do not have TouchID. If you have a modern Mac, then I recommend Add TouchID authentication to sudo.   Since 1Password added Apple Watch unlock I've wondered if there are other situations when I need to enter my password where it instead require a click of my Watch instead. I recently came across an article about how to make sudo work with… continue reading.

Using jenv to select Java version on macOS

When working on OpenWhisk, I discovered that it needed a different Java to the one I had installed. Looking around the Internet, I discovered jenv which shouldn't have surprised me as I use pyenv and I'm aware of rbenv too. As I use Homebrew, these are the commands I used. Firstly install jenv, the latest Java (15 at this time) and any other versions you need. Java 8 and 12 in this example: $ brew… continue reading.