grant horwood articles - 38 total
php: writing command-line applications with macrame. pt 2
in this series, we've been looking at how to write command line applications in php using macrame. in...
php: powerful sorting with usort
i recently worked on a rescue project where the original dev wanted to sort an array of item objects...
php: writing command-line applications with macrame. pt 1
php doesn't get a lot of attention as a command line scripting language. which is a shame, since php...
vim: five tips to become a more mediocre vim user
i am a mediocre vim user. sure, i've been using vim for over twenty years, have handcrafted a custom...
mysql: “thai food near me”, or: doing geo distance calculations in your database.
we're all familiar with the whole "thai food near me" thing. you type that phrase into your phone and...
nginx: putting your site in ‘downtime’ for everyone except you
we've all been in that less-than-ideal situation of something going horribly awry in production and...
php: concurrency with processes. pt. 2: interprocess communication with shmop
php isn't the sort of language where developers usually think about things like memory. we just sort...
php: concurrency with processes. pt. 1: using pcntl_fork for fun and performance
i often joke that php is a systems programming language that you can also use to create a home page....
php: write php 8.4’s array_find from scratch
there’s an rfc vote currently underway for a number of new array functions in php8.4 (thanks to...
amber: writing bash scripts in amber instead. pt. 4: functions
a while ago, i blogged about uploading files to s3 using curl and provided the solution as two...
amber: writing bash scripts in amber instead. pt. 3: the standard library
a programming language is only ever going to be as good as its standard library. try writing a c...
amber: writing bash scripts in amber instead. pt. 2: loops and ifs
in this series we're looking at using the amber language to write scripts that transpile into bash....
amber: writing bash scripts in amber instead. pt. 1: commands and error handling
writing shell scripts is zero fun. the bash syntax is a mess, error handling is difficult, and any...
nginx: doing ip geolocation right in nginx
knowing the geolocation of your site's users is handy thing. maybe you want to force your canadian...
php: doing recursion with recursive iterator(iterator)s
recursion has a bad reputation amongst programmers; it's convoluted and complicated and difficult to...
mysql: using json data and not hating it
it's a universal truth that one of the primary jobs of backend developers is drinking from the...
bash: splitting tarballs the ‘easy’ way
there are times when we tar and gzip a directory and the final tarball is just too damn big. maybe it...
nginx: serving private files with X-Accel-Redirect
the problem is this: we have a bunch of files, pdfs say, on our webserver that we want people to...
mysql: using the slow query log
the cold, hard truth is that the reason your web app or api is running slow is because of your...
managing disk space in bash
a week ago, i ran this db insert-heavy script on a server and forgot to turn off mysql‘s binlog...
uploading to s3 with bash
s3 is handy and useful, but it would be a lot more handy and useful if we had a shell script for...
mysql: three things you (probably) didn't know you could do with the mysql command
the mysql command is nice and simple: you run it and get a prompt, you enter a query and get your...
writing command line scripts in php: part 5; styling output text
php is primarly considered a web language, but it can certainly be used to build interactive...
php: tame arrays with map, filter and reduce
php's arrays are great. until they aren't. it's easy to let arrays get away on you and wind up...
mysql: getting a grip on dates, times, and timezones
dealing with dates, times and, espescially, timezones, is messy and zero fun. every serious...
managing your aws resources with python and boto3
managing your aws resources with command line utilities or via configuration files is pretty...
laravel: strategies for db seeding
if you write laravel projects, then you've probably written some database seeders and maybe some...
safer file access techniques in php
file handling is one of those things developers don't pay a lot of attention to anymore; we read in...
writing command line scripts in php: part 4; key-down input
php doesn't get a lot of attention as a command-line scripting language, which is a shame. php has a...
laravel: powerful json with jsonSerialize()
laravel does a pretty good job of transparently translating models to json so long as you keep things...