Author: Abdullah Yahya

Cherry-picking individual commits to merge them from one git branch to another is a very common practice. For me, I usually cherry-pick one or more commits from a develop branch to a master / main branch. The problem, however, is when I need to cherry-pick multiple commits made over a long period of time, like one month. Most git clients don’t make it easy to filter commits by keyword, and if they do, then they don’t let you easily select all filtered commits. So, back to the command line it is.

This post will describe one way to easily find all commits matching one or more keywords and extract their commit IDs on one line so you can quickly run the git cherry-pick command.

Step 1: Find and review filtered commits

We usually prefix our commit messages with an identifier so we can filter them amongst many other commits. For example, all commits to related to one project may have a commit message prefix of “LP:8929” where, in this case, “LP” stands for Landing Page. Sometimes, we might accidentally use an equal sign (=) instead of a colon (:). So, we’ll have one or more keywords to search commit messages when we filter all commits.

Furthermore, we usually cherry-pick commits from a develop branch to the master branch while we’re on master. The following command does the following:

Command	Description
git log	get the git log
master..develop	as we’re on the master branch, get the log from the develop branch
--oneline	format the output in one line (short format)
--grep='LP:8929' --grep='LP=8929‘	filter results to only results containing either ‘LP:8929’ or ‘LP=8929’
-i	do a case-insensitive search

git log master..develop --oneline --grep='LP:8929' --grep='LP=8929' -i
48b1cbcef51 LP:8929 - Fixed images path by using imagekit variable
8efa19678b3 LP:8929 - Fixed text alignment
3ab0954c725 LP:8929 - Updated banner and VS page on the landing page
bba58a1c5eb LP:8929 - Updated main heading of features section
fb56da3b134 LP:8929 - Updated content and created carousel as per the requirement
c7c6d50fbdb LP:8929 - Updated styling of the page
bc8a7fc38a1 LP:8929 - Updated icons of the comparison section
9a90ccb91ad LP:8929 - Updated text styling
a3bc0baf65f LP:8929 - Updated headshots and styling of the page
13977d2eb12 LP:8929 - Updated content as per the doc
7e589debba8 LP:8929 - First Pass: Created Landing page of Tenable v Qualys competitive page

Now that we have our list of commits, we need to review them to make sure they are correct. In our case, we primarily want to make sure the keywords are at the beginning of the commit message since that’s our commit message format.

Step 2: Extract commit IDs

If our list of commits is correct, then we need to extract the commit IDs. However, the git cherry-pick command requires the list of commit IDs to be in chronological order. By default, the git log output is in reverse chronological order. Here’s the updated command with some modifications.

Command	Description
--reverse	Reverse the git log output to chronological order
awk '{print $1}'	Extract only the text output in the first column (commit IDs)
tr '\n' ' '	Replace line breaks with spaces

git log master..develop --reverse --oneline --grep='LP:8929' --grep='LP=8929' -i  | awk '{print $1}' | tr '\n' ' '
48b1cbcef51 8efa19678b3 3ab0954c725 bba58a1c5eb fb56da3b134 c7c6d50fbdb bc8a7fc38a1 9a90ccb91ad a3bc0baf65f 13977d2eb12 7e589debba8

Step 3: Run git cherry-pick command

Now that we have our list of commit IDs in the correct order, we can copy it, type “git cherry-pick” and paste the list to create a command like the following.

git cherry-pick 48b1cbcef51 8efa19678b3 3ab0954c725 bba58a1c5eb fb56da3b134 c7c6d50fbdb bc8a7fc38a1 9a90ccb91ad a3bc0baf65f 13977d2eb12 7e589debba8

Hit enter to run your git cherry-pick command.

Svelte is a JavaScript framework similar to React, Vue, etc, but with some fundamental differences that I think make it better. It’s also much more intuitive to understand as the web component structure of the code is dead simple. When building an app using Svelte, you’re encouraged to use Sveltekit, the official Svelte application framework. But, if you just want a simple frontend-only site/app, then you can just use Svelte (without Kit). In doing so, you can then easily take the built CSS and JS files and include them in any existing web page. Then, you just add a simple div

<div id="app"></div>

in your existing HTML file where you want the app go to.

Here’s an example.

Create a Vite Project

Vite is a front-end build tool and dev server. It includes Rollup to bundle and optimize assets. Run npm init vite and follow the prompts. As you can see in the screenshot below, I chose the default project name of “vite-project”.

This will create a folder named after your project and create some files and folders within it.

Then, as the instructions say, run the commands

cd vite-project
npm install
npm run dev

npm install will download the node packages specified in the package.json file into the node_modules folder.

Start Dev Server

npm run dev will launch a dev server. Running the dev script starts a program called Vite. Vite’s job is to take your application’s source files, pass them to other programs (including Svelte, in our case) and convert them into the code that will actually run when you open the application in a browser.

If you go to the local URL http://127.0.0.1:5173/, you will see the starter Svelte app that was created automatically.

The app includes a simple interactive counter. When you click the button, the counter increments.

src Folder

If you look at the src folder, you’ll see a few files:

• The assets folder contains static assets, like images
• The lib folder contains Svelte components. In this case, there’s the counter component.
• app.css is a global CSS file for the entire app
• App.svelte is your main app code. In this case, it imports the svelte.svg logo and the Counter component.

<script>
  import svelteLogo from './assets/svelte.svg'
  import Counter from './lib/Counter.svelte'
</script>

• main.js is the main JavaScript file. It loads your app’s CSS (app.css) and your app’s main code (App.svelte). It will also load the app in the HTML element with ID app.

import './app.css'
import App from './App.svelte'

const app = new App({
  target: document.getElementById('app'),
})

export default app

Build the App for Production

When you’re done developing your app (creating components, etc), you can run a build. This will bundle all CSS and JS files into a single CSS and JS file, optimize the bundle (e.g. minify it), and output the production files in the dist (distribution) folder. Run a build with the following command.

npm run build

You’ll see a dist folder created. In this case, with the following files:

If you open index.html, you’ll see it references the two bundled CSS and JS files along with a div element with ID app where the app will be injected.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8" />
    <link rel="icon" type="image/svg+xml" href="/vite.svg" />
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" />
    <title>Vite + Svelte</title>
    <script type="module" crossorigin src="/assets/index-e83122bb.js"></script>
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="/assets/index-9ea02431.css">
  </head>
  <body>
    <div id="app"></div>
    
  </body>
</html>

Preview Built App

To preview the app from the built files, run

npm run preview

This will run a local server loading the built files.

There are many different types of website content management systems. This post will explain the different types and include some examples.

No-Code CMS

A no-code CMS is one where the entire website is managed by the CMS. For example, with webflow, all changes to your website must be done in the CMS using a WYSIWYG. You can only edit the HTML of the code widget. All other changes must be done using the UI. If you want to edit the source code of the entire site, you must export the entire site. But, you can’t import any changes you made from the export.

webflow

Database-Driven CMS

A database-driven CMS is one that stores some or all data in a database. For example, WordPress is one such CMS. Web pages and blog post content are stored in a database (usually mySQL). Unlike webflow, however, you can edit the source code of the web page templates. WordPress has a built-in versioning system, so you can see a history of changes made to a page.

• WordPress (Gutenberg Editor)
• Oxygen (Site builder, WordPress plugin)
• Elementor (Page builder, WordPress plugin)

Headless CMS

A headless CMS is one that stores data remotely. Data is integrated with your website using an API. For example, Contentful is one such CMS. You can create custom content models in Contentful. Your website will need to access the data at a particular URL that returns JSON data. Your website will then need to consume that JSON data to process it to show it on a web page, e.g. by using a template engine. Data in Contentful is likely stored in a database.

• Contentful
• Sanity
• Storyblok

Git-Based CMS

A git-based CMS stores data in git version control. Unlike many of the other CMSs, this CMS connects to your git repository as a web developer does. It then shows an interface that allows content editors to make edits to files in the repo. CloudCannon is one such CMS. With CloudCannon, web developers can add the class “editable” to HTML tags with a page’s source code. Then, the content of those tags will be the only elements that content editors can edit.

CloudCannon

FrontMatter CMS

Websites that are built using a static site generator (SSG) often include front matter. Frontmatter can come in different formats. One popular format is YAML. You can have YAML at the beginning of a page’s source code. Or, you can have a separate, standalone .yaml file. YAML contains contain name-value pairs, so they basically represent data. Netlify CMS is one type of CMS that supports editing YAML. It also supports editing pages like blog posts. However, unlike WordPress, where editors can add blocks of content to a page’s body, Netlify CMS requires the blocks of content to be predetermined upfront. So, for a blog post using Netlify CMS, editors can only use one widget to entire the entire body of the page. That widget is a rich text or markdown editor.

Netlify CMS

Structured vs Unstructured Data

The CMSs above can be categorized as CMSs that support structured and unstructured data. CloudCannon supports unstructured data because you can let editors edit specific elements of a complex page by marking those elements as “editable”. YAML and database-backed CMSs support structured data because there is a clear name/value mapping.

My Preference

Since WordPress is the most popular CMS and it allows editors to add blocks of different types of content to the body of a page, I think it’s worth using. However, I don’t like that WordPress keeps data in a database and relies on PHP to build pages before serving them. Also, not all pages need to be edited by non-technical people. In fact, most pages will still be edited by developers who need full access to the source code. To accommodate the needs of both developers and non-developers, I would use GitHub to version all code changes and I would use a static site generator like Eleventy that is integrated with WordPress using the WordPress API. When a WordPress editor saves or publishes a page, WordPress can trigger a save_post() action with a callback function that calls a URL, e.g. a PHP script on Heroku at myapi.com/?postid=123.

function call_commit_script( $post_id ) {
    $remote_url = 'https://www.myapi.com/?postid='.$post_id;
    $access_token = '3&^&2lhl3@#lsjk756'; //some secret password
    $args = array(
    'headers' => array(
       'Authorization' => 'Bearer ' . $access_token,
       ),
     );
    $response = wp_remote_get( $remote_url, $args );
    if ( is_array( $response ) && ! is_wp_error( $response ) ) {
        $headers = $response['headers']; // array of http header lines
        $body    = $response['body']; // use the content
    }
    $post_title = get_the_title( $post_id );
    $post_url = get_permalink( $post_id );
    $subject = 'A post has been updated';
    $message = "A post/page has been updated:\n\n";
    $message .= $post_title . ": " . $post_url\n\n$body;
    // Send email to admin.
    wp_mail( 'webmaster@qualys.com.com', $subject, $message );
}
add_action( 'save_post', 'call_commit_script' );

The PHP script on Heroku could then

1. verify the Authorization Bearer header contains the predetermined access token value, e.g. 3&^&2lhl3@#lsjk756. If it doesn’t, then the request didn’t come from an authorized origin and should be rejected.
2. pull any latest changes from GitHub
3. call the WordPress API to get the page content in JSON format, e.g.
   https://www.mywordpresssite.com/wp-json/wp/v2/pages/123
4. commit the JSON data to GitHub
5. use the static site generator to build the page using the JSON data as the data source

To perform git commands in PHP, this PHP library can be used.

Note: the PHP script on Heroku, e.g. https://www.myapi.com/?postid=’.$post_id, must be secured by SSL/TLS to encrypt the URL and headers so that attackers can’t see the authorization header value.

For allowing non-technical people to

• edit simple YAML files or frontmatter, I’d use Netlify CMS.
• edit complex, structured data, I’d use Contentful.
• edit specific, unstructured content, I’d use CloudCannon.

This tutorial will guide you to create a documentation website using Github and Netlify using the MkDocs static site generator. Even though MkDocs is designed for documentation, it can be used to quickly create simple websites with a navigation menu. Since I’m on Windows, this tutorial is for users on Windows.

• MkDocs (official installation page)
• python (downloads page)

Create a Project Folder

Let’s create a folder where our website project will be. I’ll call mine mkdocs at C:\Users\abdul\OneDrive\Documents\Websites\mkdocs.

Install Python

If you don’t have Python installed, you’ll need to install it. Visit Python and download the executable. When installing, be sure to check the box to “Add python.exe to PATH” is checked.

Verify python was installed by running

python --version

You may need to close and reopen the command prompt for this to work.

Install pip

pip is a package manager for python. If you just installed python, then pip will likely be installed. Test this by running the following command

pip --version

I have pip version 22.3.1. This version may be out of date, so let’s update it with

python.exe -m pip install --upgrade pip

Now, when I run pip --version, I see a newer version installed.

Create a Virtual Environment

A python virtual environment is a tool that helps to keep dependencies required by different projects separate by creating isolated python virtual environments for them. This is one of the most important tools that most Python developers use. In a terminal, go to your project folder and run the following command. venv can be any name you want.

python -m venv myvenv

This creates a folder called myvenv in your project folder containing a bunch of folders and files.

Activate Virtual Environment

Now we need to activate our virtual environment. Remember: this must be done every time you begin working on your project. You’ll know you’ve activated the virtual environment if the command prompt prefix shows the name of your virtual environment.

Windows

On Windows, we have to activate it by moving into the virtual environment folder and running Scripts\Activate.

Notice how the command prompt prefix is now myvenv.

Linux/Mac

If you’re on Linux or Mac, use the following command from the project root folder.

source myvenv/bin/activate

where myvenv is whatever name you gave your virtual environment.

Install mkdocs-material theme

You can have different themes with mkdocs. The best theme is mkdocs-material so we’ll install that one. Go back to your project root folder and run the following command.

pip install mkdocs-material

This will download the mkdocs-material dependencies in myvenv\Lib\site-packages folder.

Create a New mkdocs Site

Now, let’s create a new mkdocs site by running the following command in our project root folder.

mkdocs new .

This will create 2 files.

• mkdocs.yml is a configuration file.
• index.md is a documentation page.

Preview the Site

MkDocs comes with a built-in dev server that lets you preview your documentation as you work on it. Make sure you’re in the same directory as the mkdocs.yml configuration file, and then start the server by running the following command:

mkdocs serve

Now we have a dev server. If you open http://127.0.0.1:8000/ in a browser, you’ll see the index page.

Customize The Site

Open mkdocs.yaml to make the following changes.

Change Site Name

The default site name is “My Docs”. You can change it here.

site_name: My Docs

Add Pages to Site

Add an order, title, and nesting of each page in the navigation header by adding a nav setting. For example,

site_name: My Docs
site_url: https://www.mydocssite.com/
nav:
    - Home: index.md
    - Tutorials:
      - Tutorial 1: tutorial-1.md
      - Tutorial 2: tutorial-2.md
      - Tutorial 3: tutorial-3.md
    - How-to Guides:
      - Guide 1: guide/guide-1.md
      - Guide 2: guide/guide-2.md
      - Guide 3: guide/guide-3.md

This creates a nav menu, but the pages don’t exist yet.

Change the Theme

Let’s change the theme from the default mkdocs theme to the readthedocs theme.

site_name: My Docs
site_url: https://www.mydocssite.com/
nav:
    - Home: index.md
    - Tutorials:
      - Tutorial 1: tutorial-1.md
      - Tutorial 2: tutorial-2.md
      - Tutorial 3: tutorial-3.md
    - How-to Guides:
      - Guide 1: guide/guide-1.md
      - Guide 2: guide/guide-2.md
      - Guide 3: guide/guide-3.md
theme: readthedocs

And just like that, the website design changes.

Build the Site

So far, we’ve been previewing the changes to the site. There are still only 2 files. Let’s build the site. In another terminal window, run the following command.

mkdocs build

This creates a site folder containing the built HTML files and other files.

Create Pages

We have our nav menu, but we don’t have pages the nav links to. Let’s create those pages now. The file name and path should match what’s in the mkdocs.yaml config file and the source files should be in the docs folder. I just created some placeholder page content for demonstration purposes.

Now, our documentation website is starting to look good.

Change the Theme to the Material Theme

Let’s change the theme to the Material theme by updating the mkdocs.yaml file.

theme:
    name: material

When you do this, your dev server may crash. Just restart it with mkdocs serve. And just like that, our theme is now the Material theme.

Customize the Theme

You’ll notice that in your source code, there are no theme files. There are different ways you can customize the theme as described in the official manual. You can also create a new theme. Theme files use the Jinja2 templating engine.

Deploy to Netlify

In order to deploy to Netlify, we need

• runtime.txt (a file that specifies the version of python to run)
• requirements.txt
• netlify.toml
• GitHub account

Create runtime.txt

Create a file in the project root with the version of python you want Netlify to use when building the site. The current latest version of python that Netlify supports is 3.8. The version number must be x.y (major and minor versions only, no patch numbers).

Add requirements.txt

This file will list software dependencies and versions. Create a requirements.txt file with the following

mkdocs-material==9.0.14

You’ll end up with a requirements.txt file similar to this. 9.0.14 is the current version of mkdocs-material pip package at https://pypi.org/project/mkdocs-material/.

Create netlify.toml

netlify.toml is a Netlify configuration file. Create the file and add the following to it.

[build]

command = "mkdocs build"
publish = "site"

Push Your Changes to GitHub

Create a new repository on GitHub.com.

To avoid errors, do not initialize the new repository with README, license, or gitignore files. You can add these files after your project has been pushed to GitHub.

Initialize the local directory as a git repo. If you don’t have git installed, you’ll need to install it first.

Run git init -b main in our project folder. This will create a hidden .git folder.

Create a .gitignore file with the following entries to ignore them from being tracked by git.

site
myvenv

Add the files in your new local repository. This stages them for the first commit.

git add .

Commit the files that you’ve staged in your local repository.

git commit -m "First commit"

At the top of your repository on GitHub.com’s Quick Setup page, click to copy the remote repository URL.

In the Command prompt, add the URL for the remote repository where your local repository will be pushed.

$ git remote add origin  <REMOTE_URL> 
# Sets the new remote
$ git remote -v
# Verifies the new remote URL

Create a branch called main.

git branch -M main

Push your change to Github.

git push -u origin main

Set tracking information for the main branch.

git branch --set-upstream-to=origin/main main

In Netlify, go to import an existing site and choose the new repo you just created. Netlify will read the netlify.toml file as follows.

Finally, click the Deploy button, verify the build output, and view the site on the Netlify-generated domain.

Customize the Site

Material for MkDocs comes with many customizable features.

https://squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-material/setup/changing-the-colors/

Svelte is similar to React and Vue, but instead of doing most of the work in the browser, Svelte does it in a compile step. Also, Svelte doesn’t do virtual DOM diffing or require HTML/CSS within JavaScript. Here’s a video showing code to create a simple to-do list app using 10 different JavaScript frameworks. Personally, I find the Svelte code to be the simplest and most elegant.

You can also view the code on Github.

Creating a CRUD app using JSON objects instead of arrays is also really easy using Svelte.