Blog

Nov 30, 2016
unpkg - A CDN for npm packages

Now we can stop the deadly sin of committing our assets to git for Bower, CDNJS, and jsDelivr. Instead let’s use unpkg, a CDN for npm.
Nov 1, 2016
Element.querySelector() Evaluates the Entire DOM

I used to think that Element.querySelector() and Element.querySelectorAll() worked like jQuery.find() in that they would evaluate a CSS selector against an element’s descendants. But today I learned that they are not the same.
Jul 22, 2016
Using Redis to Persist PHP Sessions on Heroku

This article focuses on the specific task of using Redis to persist PHP sessions when running your app on Heroku. If you’re not in that exact same situation then this article will not apply to you.
May 4, 2016
Using JSON Schema to Validate JSON

When creating a new REST API I wanted to validate the return format of the JSON response. While sarching for a solution, I discovered JSON Schema.
May 4, 2016
Reset Migrations With Knex

Knex is a Node.js SQL query builder that supports multiple database implementations. It also supports migrations which are essential to any serious project using a relational db.
Sep 23, 2015
Affordable Email Forwarding For Small Projects

The biggest frustration I’ve had recently as a developer is finding cheap email forwarding. When working on a small project, such as RootsSearch, I want to have an email listed somewhere for anyone to contact me. I want that email to be forwarded to my personal inbox so that I don’t have to check multiple accounts with multiple hosts.
Jun 11, 2015
Drawing Family Pedigrees With D3

I recently set out to learn how to draw family pedigrees with D3. Their website is full of examples including an actual pedigree chart. That example was much too simple for my requirements. I wanted it to be styled like most pedigrees in software with a box around the person. I also wanted it to expand, collapse, pan, and zoom. As I perused other D3 examples, I had difficulty mixing and matching techniques and separating the basics from the fancy stylistic additions. I decided to document and share what I learned in a incremental set of examples so that you wouldn’t have to become an expert in D3 just to draw a pedigree.
May 20, 2015
Automated Testing and Code Coverage in Node.js

Code coverage is a valuable metric for understanding the quality of your test suite. In this post we will show how to quickly generate code coverage statistics for your JavaScript and Node.js libraries using Mocha, Travis CI, Istanbul, and Coveralls.
May 7, 2015
Using HTML Templates with JavaScript on the Client

Generating HTML in JavaScript can be painful. It quickly gets out of control when building any advanced UI.
Apr 29, 2015
Asset Bundling in Express

Find-A-Record is built on Express, a web framework for Node.js. Remarkably, Find-A-Record has no tests, no build system, and no asset bundling system. That’s okay for the static pages such as the home page, but the main web app relies on 15 JavaScript files and 3 CSS files in addition to the 3 JavaScript files and 3 CSS files included on every page in the site. It’s unwieldy.
Apr 21, 2015
Managing Source Maps

Find-A-Record relies on a host of open-source JavaScript libraries. It is tedious to update them, especially when using minified versions with source maps.
Apr 16, 2015
JavaScript Error Logging With Track:JS

I first discovered {TrackJS} about a year ago while browsing the list of integrations available for Segment.io. I quickly realized that TrackJS solved a problem which I didn’t know I had.
Apr 2, 2015
Managing Language Packs in a JavaScript Library

I’m in the process of adding support for multiple languages to FSCheck, but I’m stuck on how to manage the different languages.
Mar 27, 2015
Using toJSON to Customize an Object's Serialization

Circular references are common in data structures. For example, parent-child relationships where a parent has pointers to all of its children and children have pointers to their parents, or doubly-linked lists where each entry has a pointer to both the next and the previous entry. However, JSON does not support circular references. If you try to convert an object with circular references into JSON you will get a type error.
Mar 27, 2015
Designing Our Logo

When I decided it was time to start treating this company seriously, as opposed an entity which existed purely for the sake of taxes, I knew the most daunting task would be designing a logo.
Mar 25, 2015
Cloud9 IDE

A large portion of any developer’s time is spent managing their development environment. In the past I’ve primarly used vms, whether local or in the cloud. That allowed me to setup project-specific environments without worrying about conflicting versions of runtimes, compilers, supporting libraries, and environment variables. But VMs have a tremendous amount of overhead when run locally in terms of disk space, memory, and start-up times.
Mar 24, 2015
Choosing a Blog Platform

I decided to start create a company website and blog. I thought it would be easy. I’ve started many other blogs in the past. But this time my requirements would be a little bit different.