Articles

You can see tags for what topics I like to cover.

Some things I want to learn and write about (even if it’s just for myself) in the future:

Create a GitHub workflow to run PHP linters, tests, and generate coverage report
Create and configure a GitHub workflow to run PHP QA tools (e.g. phplint, phpcs), and then run unit and feature tests (e.g. php artisan test, phpunit), and finally generate a code coverage report or some other artifact.
laravel github phpunit
Published

Send a templated WhatsApp message through Twilio in Laravel
Send a message template containing emoji from Twilio in Laravel.
laravel whatsapp twilio
Published

Consume raw SQS messages from another application with Laravel's queue
Easily consume arbitrary raw AWS SQS messages produced by another application in your Laravel application’s queue with a Job and queue configuration.
laravel aws sqs
Published

Setting up CI to build and release multiple sets of documentation from an OpenAPI spec
Learn how to set up a GitHub workflow to build documentation for a generated PHP SDK from multiple generators, and consolidate them all into a single gh-pages branch.
github php openapi apigen doctum doxygen phpdoc taskfile
Published

Headless screenshot of a chart in Laravel with Browsershot and S3 upload
Generate and save a blade component containing a Chart.js chart in Laravel (without controller bloat) using Browsershot, and then upload it to S3.
laravel chartjs browsershot
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Using Laravel's pipeline to replace CMS content placeholders with values
Use the Laravel Pipeline component with many Pipes to replace arbitrary placeholders in DOM with computed values using a Model’s accessor
laravel pipeline
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A Laravel middleware to optimise images with imgproxy on arbitrary markup
Create a Laravel middleware to parse the response DOM and update a set of img’s src to be routed through imgproxy.
laravel imgproxy
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Using whiptail to show the active git branch for a set of git repositories
List the active git branch for a set of git repositories in whiptail, then jump to the selected repository’s tmux window
git tmux whiptail
Published

Tailwind CSS Breakpoints in Google Chrome Device Toolbar
Setting up the Tailwind breakpoints by adding custom devices in Google Chrome’s device toolbar for easier testing.
tailwind tailwindcss
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Building and hosting a full CI & CD containerised Laravel application
I’ve hosted many apps. I’ve set up CI to build containers. But I’ve never figured out the continuous deployment part, until now. I will use watchtower in a GitHub workflow to trigger the image update and restart the container.
github ci cd traefik watchtower
Published

Building an image for static site generator output
Bundling the generated output from a static site generator (e.g. hugo) into a simple static file server (e.g. caddy) for testing the build.
hugo docker caddy
Published

Quckie: git - copy a file from another branch without switching branch
Copy a file from another git branch without checking to that target branch.
git quickie
Published

Laravel post migration event listener
Want your Laravel app to do something after running migrations? Here’s how I did it.
laravel event migration post-migration
Published

Making filled triangle SVG with CSS
Understanding basic SVG path and viewbox for a simple filled triangle.
css svg
Published

Connecting to a remote server with mc
Connect to a remote server with mc from command line (non-interactive).
mc
Published

MySQL query logging on Mac
Enabling MySQL query logging on Mac (without Docker).
mysql
Published

Creating a fresh Laravel installation with Docker
A command I’ve used a few times to install a fresh Laravel project into the cwd’s src/ folder, leaving the cwd for your own README, Docker, Terraform, etc. files.
laravel docker php composer
Published

Using Xdebug with Laravel Valet
Installing and configuring Xdebug with Laravel Valet.
xdebug valet
Published

Some handy local development environment tools/services
A few tools (email, object storage, logging) to substitute compatible APIs from production environment for local development.
laravel docker mailhog graylog minio terraform
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A backend implementation for livewire/sortable
How to handle backend requests given from livewire/sortable. Data fetched in mount - think Posts by Users (as prop into Livewire component) under a Category (as prop into Livewire component), then sort order persisted during action and re-rendered seamlessly.
php laravel livewire
Published

Using webdevops/php-dev:7.x and configuring xDebug 3 for local development in PHPStorm
How to set up PHPStorm, and use webdevops/php-dev:7.x image using xdebubg v3.
php docker xdebug
Published

Using Terraform to provision & configure infrastructure - AWS S3 website bucket hosting & Cloudflare DNS updates
Create an AWS S3 and corresponding CNAME in Cloudflare for static site hosting using ‘infrastructure as code’ using Terraform.
aws s3 terraform cloudflare
Published

UK place data - a database as a Docker image, with a pointless multi-stage build to transform and load data
A UK place name gazetteer loaded into a docker image with some spatial querying.
mysql docker
Published

Building a database as private Docker image with structure and data for CI
Building a private Docker image with custom structure and data, for a legacy app for a slightly easier CI pipeline.
mysql docker ci
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Standard JSON validation response in Laravel
Using failedValidation for standard JSON responses on validation error(s).
php laravel
Published

Single action Laravel controllers and FQCN in route definitions
Slim single action controllers and IDE friendly FQCN route definitions in Laravel.
php laravel
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PHP code analysis with Sonarqube in Docker
Code Quality and Security - SonarQube empowers all developers to write cleaner and safer code.
php docker sonarqube
Published

Changing semi-unstructured JSON data in a MySQL backing store to MongoDB
Moving our semi-unstructured data from a mysql database, stored in a json column to a mongodb instance for better performance.
mongodb mysql csv
Published

Querying an IP restricted API with Postman
Use a SOCKS proxy to query an IP restricted API with Postman.
proxy socks ssh postman
Published

Github Actions: Build code-generated assets, create a release and attach those assets to the release
Automatically have Github Actions build some code-generated (binary) assets and attach to a release when a new tag is pushed.
github git php tcpdf ci
Published

Deploying a static site generators build to an S3 bucket using CI with Bitbucket pipelines
Automatically have Bitbucket CI build a static site and move the built into a production or staging bucket depending on the branch.
nuxt s3 bitbucket ci cloudflare
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PHP environment for Codewars Kata challenges
Relatively barebones PHP environment for Codewars Kata challenges, with xdebug.
docker php xdebug kcachegrind
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Publish messages to RabbitMQ for a worker to process later
Publish messages to a RabbitMQ instance using PHP. Build a PHP consumer to process messages in the background with supervisord.
docker php rabbitmq supervisord
Published

Using Ghost as Headless CMS in a Laravel Site
How you might integrate content written in a Ghost Blog into a Laravel site using its Content API.
php laravel ghost
Published

S3 Database Dump Sync For Local Development
A simple whiptail script to select which databases you want to refresh for local development work. Downloads using awscli and some pv for progress on decompressing and importing.
aws s3 bash whiptail
Published

Scraping legacy static sites and hosting them (yuck!)
This was hell. Just an excuse to save some handy wget, ssh, find, csvtool, xargs, commands and other occasionally useful things, honestly.
php wget csv httpd cloudflare
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Basic PDF manipulation tools with zenity, pdftk, and gs
Basic scripts for dealing with PDF in my job - converting, cutting and catting - throwing some zenity around gs and pdftk.
pdf bash zenity pdftk gs
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Apache httpd Server Configuration Hardening
Some tips I picked up to make sites hosted on Apache httpd servers more secure.
httpd
Published

A nicer, more efficient terminal experience with tmux and tmuxinator.
Friendship ended with terminator, now tmux is my best friend.
tmux
Published

Integrating Some PHP QA Tools
How you can integrate some PHP QA tools in your project, and guard your project with git hooks.
php docker bash git make
Published

Developing in PHP with Docker: one nginx ingress to isolated httpd & php containers
One ingress nginx reverse proxy to multiple php:apache containers with different (XDebug) configurations.
docker nginx apache httpd php xdebug mysql
Published

Server checklist with whiptail and logger.
An interactive CLI for logging server audits in bash with whiptail and logger.
bash whiptail logger
Published