Receiving input into a Slim 4 application

A Slim 4 (and Slim 3) application receives data from three places: Any query parameters on the URL (the key-value pairs after the ?) The HTTP message's body (usually for POST and PUT) messages Parameters in the URL (such as the 3 in https://example.com/users/3 Within the application, these are available within the PSR-7 Request object. Let's start with a simple Slim 4 application. Firstly we require the Slim framework and a PSR-7 implementation: $ composer… continue reading.

Posted on 4 September 2019 in PHP, Slim Framework, Slim Framework 4

Automatically mounting a network drive on Mac

I have so many photos that I can't store them all on my hard drive and keep them on my NAS. While on my home network, it would be convenient to automatically mount the NAS folder onto my Mac as I keep forgetting before I open Lightroom. Usually I would use automount to do this, but Lightroom cannot see automounted folders, so I decided to use a combination of AppleScript and Keyboard Maestro. Mount a… continue reading.

Posted on 28 August 2019 in Computing, Keyboard Maestro

A first look at Slim 4

With Slim 4 we have continued the tradition of allowing you to use the framework in the way that best fits you and your project. You can create a Slim application entirely in a single file suitable for prototyping through to a few files for a simple web hook or serverless action all the way to fully-decoupled application suitable for the enterprise. From my point of view, the big changes with Slim 4 are: Support… continue reading.

Posted on 21 August 2019 in Slim Framework, Slim Framework 4

Displaying exif information in WordPress posts

After discovering that WordPress modifies img tags when rendering a page, it crossed my mind that I could display exif information underneath each image on my new photography blog. The basic process is applicable to any manipulation of the content that you would want to do before it is displayed. To do this, we add a new filter to the the_content hook: add_filter('the_content', function ($content) { // manipulate $content return $content; }); As with all… continue reading.

Posted on 14 August 2019 in PHP, WordPress

Images and WordPress

My new WordPress project has multiple photographs per post and as I wanted them to work in an efficient manner for multiple screen resolutions. The secret to this is the srcset and sizes attributes on the img tag. It turns out that WordPress will create multiple sized thumbnails when you upload an image. It will also add the srcset and sizes attributes into your img tags for you if your image tag has a class… continue reading.

Posted on 7 August 2019 in MarsEdit, PHP, WordPress

Developing WordPress sites with Docker

I recently set up a new WordPress based website and local Docker-based development environment. This post documents what I did, so that I can do it again next time! As I'm not in the WordPress world, many things are strange to me and I'm indebted to Jenny Wong for pointing me in the right direction on numerous occasions and being very patient with my questions! Thanks Jenny! Project organisation There's always ancillary files and directories… continue reading.

Posted on 1 August 2019 in PHP, WordPress

Setting title and caption with exiftool

I recently needed to change the title and caption of some photos, so I turned to exiftool as it's the Swiss Army knife of image metadata.

It's a lovely tool with many options, so I wrote a script to make it easy and while I was there, used read to prompt me for the info to set. This is the script:

Posted on 29 July 2019 in Photography

Creating virtual environments with Pyenv

rst2pdf is a Python 2 application that we're making compatible with Python 3. When developing Python applications, I've found it useful to be able to switch python versions easily and also set up clean environments to work in. To do this, I currently use pyenv. This is how I set it up: Install Pyenv On my Mac, I install pyenv & its sister project pyenv-virtualenv with Homebrew: $ brew install readline xz $ brew install… continue reading.

Posted on 17 July 2019 in Python, rst2pdf

Using a separate master password in 1Password for Mac

I really like the 1Password password manager and recently switched to using the subscription based account. This allows access to my passwords via the web so, as you can imagine, I have a very strong 35 character master password set. On my Mac, I use the 1Password app and that requires me to enter my master password reasonably frequently, so this very long password is not so desirable here. I'm comfortable that a 12 character… continue reading.

Posted on 10 July 2019 in Software

Running PHP applications on Azure App Engine

Azure App Service is a way to host your web application in a container without having to think about the server. It's the same PaaS concept as AWS Elastic Beanstalk and supports all the main web programming languages. It also supports Windows and Linux OS containers. I have a client that is moving an on-premises PHP application to App Service and so have been looking at what I needed to do to deploy it there.… continue reading.

Posted on 3 July 2019 in Azure, PHP