The Laravel and the Vue.js online communities are very good at sharing code snippets over on Twitter. I had a whole pile of these examples loaded in tabs on my phone. I would rather share them here on this journal for future reference. Enjoy.

👋 Hey there.

Life has an odd way of moving in new and unexpected directions. For my part, I recently was given full responsibility over a rather complex set of systems at my place of work. This came about due to a recent staffing reduction.

When I think of how God has blessed my wife and I, through a chance interview that led to a relatively stable career path, I realize that my life is truly not my own. Instead, I am caught up in a journey crafted by God, who loves as deep as the furthest reaches of this vast universe. There is no one quite like our Creator.

My wife and I recently read through Pastor Brian Houston's Bible reading plan called New Roads, New Rivers. Here is an excerpt that may encourage you, especially if you are undergoing a time of transition in your life.

Are you expecting God to do a new thing in your life? That may seem overwhelming when you consider your present circumstances but take courage. God has made a way, a road to lead you with rivers of provision and refreshing.

If anyone thirsts, let him COME to me and drink. Rivers of living water will brim and spill out of the depths of anyone who believes in me this way, just as the Scripture says.
– John  7:38 (MSG)

Here is an excerpt from an Australian mailing list I read called Word For Today.

President Reagan enjoyed telling the story of how he learned to make firm decisions. When he was a boy, his aunt sent him to a cobbler to have a new pair of shoes made for him. When the shoemaker asked, 'Do you want a square toe or a round one?' he hemmed and hawed, so the cobbler said, 'Come back in a day or two and tell me what you want.' Later the cobbler saw Reagan on the street and asked what he had decided about the shoes. 'I haven't made up my mind yet,' he answered. 'Very well,' the cobbler said, 'your shoes will be ready tomorrow.' When Reagan got the shoes, one had a round toe and the other a square toe! Reagan said, 'Looking at those shoes every day taught me a lesson. If you don't make your own decisions, somebody else will make them for you.' Worst case: if you get it wrong, you'll learn what not to do next time. Bottom line: to succeed in life you must pray for wisdom, and then make a decision.

'A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.' James 1:8 KJV

If you make use of the Laravel framework, here is a code example from Taylor Otwell on how to use cache locking.

try {
    $lock = Cache::lock('foo', 10)->block(5);

    // Lock acquired after waiting maximum of 5 seconds...
} catch (LockTimeoutException $e) {
    // Unable to acquire lock...
} finally {
    optional($lock)->release();
}

As a follow up to the previous entry, you can also include a function to return a casts array for a trait/concern that your eloquent model is using.

trait HasUuid
{
    public function getHasUuidCasts()
    {
        if(config('uuid.binary_format')) {
            return ['uuid' => 'uuid'];
        }

        return [];
    }

    //
}

Here is the trait that will enable this functionality on your eloquent models.

trait HasTraitsWithCasts
{
    /**
     * Get the casts array.
     *
     * @return array
     */
    public function getCasts()
    {
        $class = static::class;

        foreach (class_uses_recursive($class) as $trait) {
            $method = 'get'.class_basename($trait).'Casts');

            if (method_exists($class, $method) {
                $this->casts = array_unique(
                    array_merge($this->casts, $this->{$method}())
                );
            }
        }

        return parent::getCasts();
    }
}

In the same way that we can use a boot{Trait}() method in a trait/concern for an eloquent model, it would be nice to be able to register specific date fields in a trait/concern (i.e. Publishable with a published_at timestamp column).

trait Publishable
{
    public function getPublishableDates()
    {
        return ['published_at'];
    }

    // 
}

Here is the trait that will enable this functionality on your eloquent models.

trait HasTraitsWithDates
{
    /**
     * Get the attributes that should be converted to dates.
     *
     * @return array
     */
    public function getDates()
    {
        $class = static::class;

        foreach (class_uses_recursive($class) as $trait) {
            $method = 'get'.class_basename($trait).'Dates');

            if (method_exists($class, $method) {
                $this->dates = array_unique(
                    array_merge($this->dates, $this->{$method}())
                );
            }
        }

        return parent::getDates();
    }
}

The beautiful part is that this feature is additive in nature. Both default fields, created_at and updated_at, as well as those defined in the $dates property on a model are still included with any trait based date fields when getDates() is called.

Here are two commands that can help when dealing with physical Linux servers.

To get detailed information directly from the hard drive:

$ hdparm -I /dev/sda

To get a list of all the serial numbers for your hard drives:

$ for i in a b c d e f g h; do echo -n "/dev/sd$i: "; hdparm -I /dev/sd$i | awk '/Serial Number/ {print $3}'; done

If you want to use a deployment tool like Capistrano or Laravel Envoy with symbolic linked release directories, instead of mapping your script to the path of the symlink with $document_root:

location ~ \.php$ {
    # ...
    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
    # ...
}

You should instead reference the $realpath_root variable as this allows for all new requests to immediately be mapped to the new release on deployment.

location ~ \.php$ {
    # ...
    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $realpath_root$fastcgi_script_name;
    fastcgi_param DOCUMENT_ROOT $realpath_root;
    # ...
}

As a continuation of my last post, here is a command if you want to find the total combined size (in kilobytes) of a set of folders or files listed in a text file named file-list.txt.

$ find -print -maxdepth 1 | grep -Fxf file-list.txt | xargs du -k | awk '{total=total+$1} END {print total}'

If you need to narrow down a list of folders in a directory to the set that you need to either archive or cleanup from a linux server, here's a quick command.

First, add the list of folders that you know you want to keep to a file named file-list.txt. All other folders will be printed from this command.

$ ls -hal | grep ^d | grep -Fxvf file-list.txt

What the flags mean:

-mtime +7
More than seven days old

-maxdepth 1
Only search the current directory, not recursively

-F, --fixed-strings
Interpret PATTERN as a list of fixed strings, separated by newlines, any of which is to be matched.

-x, --line-regexp
Select only those matches that exactly match the whole line.

-v, --invert-match
Invert the sense of matching, to select non-matching lines.

-f FILE, --file=FILE
Obtain patterns from FILE, one per line.  The empty file contains zero patterns, and therefore matches nothing.

If you want get a count to make sure the all folders listed in file-list.txt exist in the current directory, here's another command.

$ ls -hal | grep ^d | grep -Fxf file-list.txt | wc -l

If you ever accidentally tag the wrong branch with a release, you can move the release back to the draft stage on GitHub with the following commands.

1. Delete the tag locally
   git tag -d v1.0
2. Delete the v1.0 tag on GitHub
   git push origin :v1.0

You can then select the correct branch on GitHub and publish the release once more.

If you want to launch SublimeText from the command line on macOS, here you go...

$ ln -s /Applications/Sublime\ Text.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/subl /usr/local/bin/sublime
$ ln -s /Applications/Sublime\ Text.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/subl /usr/local/bin/subl

Now you can...

$ cd ~/code/project
$ sublime .
$ subl .

When you're looking to free space on a server...

$ df -h
$ du -xhd1 /

Update 2017-02-10:

A new assertJsonFragment() function has been added to laravel/framework to replace the old seeJsonContains() function.

If you want to get your tests updated for Laravel 5.4, and need a quick patch for the missing assertJsonContains(), here's a macro that you can place in the createApplication() function, either in  your tests/CreatesApplication.php trait or your tests/TestCase.php file, depending on how your test folder is setup.

TestResponse::macro('assertJsonContains', 
    function (array $data) {
        $actual = json_encode(Arr::sortRecursive(
            (array) $this->decodeResponseJson()
        ));

        foreach (Arr::sortRecursive($data) as $key => $value) {
            $expected = substr(json_encode([$key => $value]), 1, -1);

            PHPUnit::assertTrue(
                Str::contains($actual, $expected),
                'Unable to find JSON fragment'.PHP_EOL.
                "[{$expected}]".PHP_EOL.
                'within'.PHP_EOL.
                "[{$actual}]."
            );
        }

        return $this;
    });

You'll also want the following use statements

use Illuminate\Support\Arr;
use Illuminate\Support\Str;
use PHPUnit\Framework\Assert as PHPUnit;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Testing\TestResponse;

I often run into quality issues in Javascript packages that I want to adopt. Most of these issues consist of simple bugs that are worth eradicating with a pull request. However, the sole reason these packages are not updated is often due to the owners simply not maintaining them. The unfortunate side effect is a lot of forks getting created.

I am currently reading:

Ansible For DevOps by Jeff Geerling

Ansible is a simple, but powerful, server and configuration management tool (with a few other tricks up its sleeve). This book helps those familiar with the command line and basic shell scripting start using Ansible to provision and manage anywhere from one to thousands of servers.

The book begins with fundamentals, like installing Ansible, setting up a basic inventory file, and basic concepts, then guides you through Ansible's many uses, including ad-hoc commands, basic and advanced playbooks, application deployments, multiple-provider server provisioning, and even Docker orchestration! Everything is explained with pertinent real-world examples, often using Vagrant-managed virtual machines.

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

Cryptonomicon zooms all over the world, careening conspiratorially back and forth between two time periods - World War II and the present. Our 1940s heroes are the brilliant mathematician Lawrence Waterhouse, crypt analyst extraordinaire, and gung-ho, morphine-addicted marine Bobby Shaftoe. They're part of Detachment 2702, an Allied group trying to break Axis communication codes while simultaneously preventing the enemy from figuring out that their codes have been broken. Their job boils down to layer upon layer of deception. Dr. Alan Turing is also a member of 2702, and he explains the unit's strange workings to Waterhouse. "When we want to sink a convoy, we send out an observation plane first... Of course, to observe is not its real duty--we already know exactly where the convoy is. Its real duty is to be observed... Then, when we come round and sink them, the Germans will not find it suspicious."

All of this secrecy resonates in the present-day story line, in which the grandchildren of the WWII heroes - inimitable programming geek Randy Waterhouse and the lovely and powerful Amy Shaftoe - team up to help create an offshore data haven in Southeast Asia and maybe uncover some gold once destined for Nazi coffers. To top off the paranoiac tone of the book, the mysterious Enoch Root, key member of Detachment 2702 and the Societas Eruditorum, pops up with an unbreakable encryption scheme left over from WWII to befuddle the 1990s protagonists with conspiratorial ties.