Matthew Daly articles - 38 total
30 Plants a Week Tracker - React Native app built for the GitHub Copilot Challenge
This is a submission for the GitHub Copilot Challenge : New Beginnings What I Built For a...
Dynamic image handling with Glide and GraphQL
I've used Glide on several PHP projects in the past. It's a great package that makes it really easy...
Lightweight Laravel - deconstructing a full stack framework
Back when I used to work with Django, I read the book Lightweight Django, and it completely changed...
What I want in a PHP CMS
I maintain a custom PHP legacy CMS for a client, and have also been building a micro-CMS as a...
Flow typed AJAX responses with React Hooks
I’m a big fan of type systems in general. Using Psalm to find missing type declarations and incorrect...
Does technical debt make burnout more likely?
I've been working on a large legacy project for just over two years, and it's been my primary focus...
Caching the Laravel user provider with a decorator
A couple of years ago I posted this article about constructing a caching user provider for Laravel....
The trouble with integrated static analysis
I’ve always been a big fan in general of tools that provide feedback about the quality of my code....
Don't use stdClass
The digital agency I work for specialises in marketing, so some of my work tends to relate to mailing...
F*** PHPStorm Man and the high horse he rode in on
There’s a particularly unpleasant type of programmer that exists, and you’ve probably met him, either...
Unconventional backends and data sources
I've been a web dev for seven years now, and most of the sites I've worked on have used a database,...
Input components with the useState and useEffect hooks in React
Like many developers who use React.js, I’ve been eager to explore the Hooks API in the last year or...
Flexible data types with the JSON field
Relational databases have many advantages over other data stores. They’re (mostly) solid, mature...
Storing Wordpress configuration in environment variables
Wordpress configuration can be a serious pain in the proverbial. Hard-coding configuration details in...
Using Mix versioning outside Laravel
Laravel Mix is a really convenient front end scaffold, and not just in the context of a Laravel...
Setting private properties in tests
Sometimes when writing a test, you come across a situation where you need to set a private field...
Skipping environment specific PHPUnit tests
If you’re doing client work, you don’t generally have to worry too much about working with any...
What have you been watching on TV lately?
Interested to know what other developers have been watching, or are looking forward to. Doesn't...
Powering up git bisect with the run command
The bisect command in Git can be very useful when trying to catch any regressions. If you know that a...
Writing golden master tests for Laravel applications
Last year I wrote a post illustrating how to write golden master tests for PHP applications in...
How much difference does adding an index to a database table make?
For the last few weeks, I’ve been kept busy at work building out a new homepage for the legacy...
Searching content with Fuse.js
Search is a problem I’m currently taking a big interest in. The legacy project I maintain has an...
Higher-order components in React
In the last few weeks I’ve been working on a big rebuild of the homepage of the legacy application I...
Creating your own dependency injection container in PHP
Dependency injection can be a difficult concept to understand in the early stages. Even when you’re...
Understanding query objects
The project I’ve been maintaining for the last year has inherited a rather dubious database structure...
Writing a custom sniff for PHP CodeSniffer
I’ve recently come around to the idea that in PHP all classes should be final by default, and have...
You don't need that module package
Lately I’ve seen a number of Laravel packages being posted on places like Reddit that offer ways to...
Why bad code is bad
This may sound a little trite, but why is it bad to write bad code? Suppose you’re a client, or a...
Improving search in Vim and Neovim with FZF and Ripgrep
A while back I was asked to make some changes to a legacy project that was still using Subversion....
Decorating service classes
I’ve written before about using decorators to extend the functionality of existing classes, in the...