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Building a chat application using SvelteJS and SSE

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Tags nodejs JavaScript web-development servers

If you’ve already developed web applications with ReactJS or VueJS, you’ve probably heard of SvelteJS. In this article, author will explore this new framework to discover its subtleties, and show you how it is not so different from others (on the surface). By Julien Demangeon.

We will take advantage of this experience to use the SSE (Server Sent Event) protocol for data exchanges in the same time. It has been confidential for a long time but it is more and more used.

In the mid-2010s, ReactJS and VueJS changed the game by introducing the concept of “Virtual DOM” and thus reducing the number of mutations on the DOM, which are very slow.

SvelteJS was developed by Rich Harris, who is also the creator of the JavaScript compiler / bundler called RollupJS. The first version of the library was released at the end of 2016. It has been developed to relieve the browser of the unnecessary and expensive processing introduced by the Virtual DOM diffing of recent frameworks.

Thus, SvelteJS has moved this complexity to the compilation stage, partially reducing the weight of JavaScript bundles and speeding up rendering times.

The article then focuses on building chat application, providing all the necessary code together with good explanation. Svelte is really promising, but its ecosystem is lacking when compared to the major JS frameworks. Nice one!

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Everything about null in JavaScript

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Tags nodejs javascript programming code-refactoring

JavaScript has 2 kinds of types: primitives (strings, booleans, numbers, symbols) and objects. But there are situations when an object cannot be created. For such cases, JavaScript provides a special value null – which indicates a missing object. By Dmitri Pavlutin.

In this post, you’ll learn everything about null in JavaScript: its meaning, how to detect it, the difference between null and undefined, and why using null extensively creates code maintenance difficulties.

The article is split into:

  • The concept of null
  • Real-world analogy of null
  • How to check for null
  • null is falsy
  • typeof null
  • The trap of null
  • Alternatives to null
  • null vs undefined

Avoid if possible returning null or setting variables to null. This practice leads to the spread of null values and verifications for null. Instead, try to use objects with default properties, or even throw errors. And good to remember: typeof is misleading in case of null: typeof null evaluates to ‘object’. Good read!

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EKS vs GKE vs AKS: Evaluating Kubernetes in the cloud

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Tags devops cloud aws containers azure kubernetes gcp

We are now six years past the initial release of Kubernetes, and it continues to be one of the fastest-growing open-source projects to date. By Michael Foster.

The rapid development and adoption of Kubernetes has resulted in many different implementations of the application. The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) currently lists over 100 certified Kubernetes distributions or platforms. To ensure some consistency between platforms, the CNCF focuses on three core tenet:

  • Consistency: The ability to interact consistently with any Kubernetes installation.
  • Timely updates: Vendors are required to keep versions updated, at least yearly.
  • Confirmability: Any end-user can verify the conformity using Sonobuoy.

These are the baseline requirements for the CNCF when it comes to Kubernetes, but cloud providers have such rich ecosystems that there are bound to be more significant discrepancies. The authors took a wide-ranging look at the current features and limitations of managed Kubernetes services from the three largest cloud providers.

Plenty of data in neat comparison tables. All data in the tables comes from the official provider online documentation. Great work!

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Angular security best practices

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Tags nodejs angular frontend web-development infosec

This time, we dive straight into the modern Angular security best practices. By Liran Tal, Natalia Venditto.

The article centres around this list:

  • The “Angular way” safeguards you from XSS
  • Use innerHTML with caution
  • Never use templates generated by concatenating user input
  • Never use native DOM APIs to interact with HTML elements
  • Avoid template engines on server-side templates
  • Scan your Angular project for components which introduce security vulnerabilities

Angular, much like React and Vue.js, takes on a security-by-default approach in the way it handles string interpolation in the browser. By default, all data is treated as unsafe and untrusted, and hence all of these libraries, and other modern view libraries, follow the best practice of performing output encoding by default for any text in an HTML context.

If you’re looking for anything close to an Angular security scanner check Snyk (for free) out as a way to track your open source dependencies, get notified, and fix them as vulnerabilities get discovered. Good read!

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A CD pipeline on GKE with Argocd and Keel

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Tags devops cicd web-development

An article describing how to use argoCD as a tool in your CD pipeline for the GKE clusters. You can use keel alongside argoCD to complement it. By Nico.

Keel is a simple piece of software that runs on the cluster and watches the changes to the registered images, allowing to update them automatically and therefore have the dev and pre production platform up-to-date without the developers having to do any action.

The article then reads about:

  • The development flow
  • Keel
  • ArgoCD

Example code for Helm charts is also provided. You will be able to configure your sources, projects and such either via the web UI or the CLI (because CLI rocks !) and give freedom to our users to handle the deployments by themselves, in a controlled manner. Good read!

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5 important agile interview questions

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Tags agile management teams cio

Here are outlined some basic yet relevant questions that you can ask a potential candidate, and gauge whether or not they are going to be a good fit for your department, team, or organization. By theagiletimes.com.

That is not to say that your candidate should answer all of them correctly to be considered the perfect member to add to your team, but they should be within some level of understanding on why these questions are being asked.

  • What does Agile mean to you?
  • What types of Agile processes have you implemented before?
  • What is your idea of an Agile mindset?
  • How often must Agile be practiced during a project?
  • Can Agile be tailored?

Agility is not to be pulled apart and peeled only for certain parts and principles. Interesting read!

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Writing AWS Lambda functions with Typescript and Webpack

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Tags nodejs javascript serverless frontend web-development

Whether you use terraform, the terraform cdk or the aws cdk, you still need to compile your source code and make them into lambda deployment packages. By Julian.

A lambda deployment package is a ZIP file that contains the source code for the lambda function. At it’s most basic a deployment package has one file in it. This file will contain a handler. Regardless of which IAC tool you use you will need to define the name of the handler which consists of the filename (minus the file extension) and the handler function inside the file.

In this article we are going to use webpack to compile our lambdas and bundle everything including modules into one compressed file. Folder structure and code for webpack is explained and provided as a gist in this repository. Good read!

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How I built a serverless recipes app with FaunaDB and Vue.js

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Tags nodejs javascript serverless

The author’s experience with building a minimal web application that would serve him and his wife as a recipes collection for food that we enjoy cooking. Convenient bonus features like PWA functionality (i.e. using the app on the phone or tablet when standing in the kitchen) and user authentication should be available too, making sure it’s not just functional, but also enjoyable to use. By Tom.

The article then describes:

  • Why Fauna?
  • Basic App Functionality
  • Vue App Setup
  • Serverless Functionality
  • Local Development Configuration
  • User Authentication
  • Functions

… and more. The cloud services author used for this project (Cloudinary, FaunaDB and Netlify) all have a very generous free tier without any noticeable throttling or service restrictions. Good read!

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How to optimize Vue.js applications

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Tags frontend web-development javascript nodejs

Performance is a touchy subject in software engineering. It’s one thing to write code and ship it; it’s another thing entirely to make it faster and more enjoyable for your users — and the next developers after you. Published on theninja.blog.

In this article, we will look at how to speed up your Vue.js web applications, thereby improving both user experience and developer experience as well. The article covers topics:

  • Lazy loading route components
  • Minimize the use of external libraries
  • Compress and optimize images
  • Lazy load images
  • Reuse functionalities across your app

While there are even more ways to optimize our Vue applications not listed here, the five techniques listed above are among the most used. You will get code examples for each topic mentinoned. Nice one!

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Building your own design strategy as a UX designer

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Tags ux web-development app-development teams learning

Having a defined process will help you work in a more organized and fluid way. Here are the key components of a UX workflow. By Mehek Kapoor.

When working in a design team, it’s likely that your team works according to a certain methodology in order to conduct an effective design process. But if you are working as the only designer in a small company or doing freelance work, client deadlines and constantly changing user requirements are some of the things that take most of your time and energy.

In such situations, how do you make sure that you have a proper approach and a design methodology to follow when working on any project? Before we get to the answer to this question, there are a few things that are important to understand:

  • What is a UX design strategy?
  • Why should a designer have a design strategy?
    • Step 1: Understanding user requirements
    • Step 2: Performing a competitive analysis
    • Step 3: Searching for a suitable user base
    • Step 4: Doing user research
    • Step 5: Creating a product roadmap
    • Step 6: Building the user interface

… and much more. Your designs are your craft, and any live website that you have designed can really add a lot of potential to your portfolio. It can give you more work in the future and make your profile stand out in the pool of designers. Excellent!

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