Many web developers are familiar with online editors like TinyCME. If you’ve edited a blog post in WordPress using the classic editor, then you know what I mean.
The problem with this type of editor is it’s too easy to accidentally output garbage HTML. WordPress has switched to offering a block style editor.
If you need to create a similar editor for your web project, editor.js offers inline block-style editing and it outputs clean data in json format.
Here’s a screenshot of example JSON output which can then be used with
This JSON data can then be used with a templating language like Handlebars to build web pages.
Icons make a big difference in the look of a website. When placed beside text links, they make the links stand out. They can be used to replace text links, especially on mobile. They accompany text to make boring, text heavy pages easier to read. But, finding icons or creating them can be difficult. FontAwesome solves this by offering thousands of icons that are easily searchable. If I search for car, here’s what I see.
To use an icon, e.g. of a car, just paste this HTML code.
Have you ever needed to do search and replace multiple times against the same file or set of files. If so, the Batch Replacer extension for VisualStudio Code makes this very simple.
Open a folder or file in VisualStudio Code
Create a new file (no need to save it) and enter some search and replace instructions, e.g.
In the example above, I want 3 different replacements done in the order shown and I only want the replacements done to a specific file. The “in” command is followed by the path of the file relative to the root of the workspace open in VS Code. If the file is open, you can get it by right clicking on its tab and selecting “Copy relative path”.
3. Execute the replacer script
To run the batch replacements, you active tab must be the tab containing your replacement instructions. Then, hit CTRL+SHIFT+P -> Batch Replace. A status window will appear in the bottom right corner telling you how many files have been modified. If you want to batch replace across all files in your workspace, don’t include the “in” instruction.
A few years ago I tried a product called Leave-in Hair Treatment with Argan Oil by HSI Professional. It came in a red box and bottle.
You just dab a little in the palm of your hand and massage it through your hair and it instantly makes your hair look and feel better. The ingredients are
Unsurprisingly, it got many good reviews on Amazon.
Unfortunately, this product has been replaced with a similar but slightly different product. It’s good but definitely not as good as the original formula.
To understand the difference and find products that are just as good, if not better, here is a list of products that have similar ingredients. Note that the percent amount of each ingredient is in descending order.
Phenyl Trimethicone reduces the tendency of finished products to generate foam when shaken. It also enhances the appearance and feel of hair, by increasing hair body, suppleness, or sheen, or by improving the texture of hair that has been damaged physically or by chemical treatment. Phenyl Trimethicone slows the loss of water from the skin by forming a barrier on the skin’s surface.
Keratin Amino Acids
Used for conditioning, moisturizing, known to make hair glossy, give it more body, and also for its marketing appeal (natural ingredient as well as hair is made from this). It’s a strong humectant, and pulls water into the hair.
Peg-4 Laurate, Peg-4 Dilaurate
They also clean the skin and hair by helping water to mix with oil and dirt so that they can be rinsed away.
Lodopropynyl Butylcarbamate, Phenoxyethanol
Prevents or retards bacterial growth, thereby protecting cosmetics and personal-care products from spoilage.
Creating a time lapse video is great for quickly showing changes that happen over a long period of time, e.g. the sky changing from day to night. I recently made a time lapse video of a pergola construction project using an Android app called Framelapse. It’s a very simple app which takes pictures at a user-specified interval over a set period of time or until you stop recording. What’s great is this method doesn’t fill up your phone by taking an actual video at the normal frame rate of 30 frames per second. For my first timelapse video, I chose a frame interval of 4 seconds. When I stopped recording, the timelapse video was instantly done and available in my Google Photos app and backed up to Google Photos in the cloud. I added some background music and I was done. Here’s the final video.
I’ve decided to move move and back up files files in the cloud. This includes moving all photos to Google Photos. Apparently, I had many duplicate photos in different folders that needed to be reorganized and deduped. Fortunately, CCCleaner makes finding and duplicating files of any time free, safe and easy. As you can see in the screenshot below, you can compare files and mark which ones to remove before removing them. There are many filters and controls so you can customize the search.
Testing HTTP connections and Rest APIs can easily be done using Postman. This handy tool allows you to provide HTTP headers, among many other things, to test connections and view responses.
Here’s a test of querying a Rest API from restdb.io. The query URL is https://testdb-cd69.restdb.io/rest/people. For authentication, an HTTP header called “x-apikey” is provided with its value (redacted). The response from the call is in the body panel in JSON format.
If you have a webhook or form that makes an http request to another system, you can test the request and see the response easily using httpbin.org.
For example, if you have a form that posts data, you can set the action attribute’s value to https://httpbin.org/post. Then, submit the form and you will see what the posts data looks like. This is great for testing.
If you need a quick and easy way to create a CMS (content management system) or a database backend for an app, then Restdb.io will amaze! Here are some features:
super developer-friendly with crystal clear documentation
affordable and even has a free plan
example code for popular programming languages, including client side JavaScript and server side NodeJS, which makes it quick to get up and running
webhooks whenever a record is created, updated or deleted
codehooks to run custom code before and after a record is created, updated or deleted, e.g. for data normalizing and validation. codehooks also support scheduled tasks like cron jobs.
auto-generate test data to seed a table
ability to import data from a CSV file
native and custom field validation
non-technical users can log in and add/edit/delete records using intuitive forms and controls without seeing any developer features
ability to upload and host images and files
Below is a tutorial on how to create a simple CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) app using Restdb.io with a PHP backend.
1. Log in to Restdb.io account and create a table (collection)
After you log in, you’ll need to be in Developer Mode to create a table. When creating fields in the table, Restdb.io offers numerous field property options including native and custom field validation.
2. Add or import data
To populate the table, you can
Add data field by field, row by row
Import data from a CSV file
Auto-generate data by clicking on the Test Data tab
Using the Test Data option, I chose to generate 5 rows which gave me this.
3. Get sample CRUD code
Click on [Table] > API Docs and choose a language to see sample code for
The sample PHP CRUD code provided by RestDB.io requires the use of the HttpRequest PEAR PECEL HTTP_Request extension. To avoid having to install this dependency, you can just use cURL which is included with PHP.
NodeJS
Below is a screenshot using NodeJS using the Request library.
JavaScript using jQuery AJAX
You can also perform CRUD actions using client-side JavaScript but you need to set up CORS (cross-origin resource sharing). The example below shows JavaScript using jQuery AJAX.
For client-side JavaScript, you need to generate a CORS API key. The screenshot below shows a CORS API key (redacted) that allows connections from any origin server but only allows the GET method to read data.
In the screenshot above, the API key would only work for the “people” table / collection. To have one key work for all tables / collections, use “/**” instead.
4. PHP: Create a file to test reading from the database
I created a test file called read-curl.php which uses cURL to connect to the remote database.
After uploading it to my web host, opening the file in a browser shows me the data in JSON format, as expected, which you can see live at http://zabuun.com/restdb.io/read-curl.php
You can also test the API by installing Postman (free), entering a query in the form of a REST URL, and entering your API key as an HTTP header.
4. JavaScript (jQuery + AJAX): Create a file to test reading from the database
I created a test file called read.html with the following code. This code uses the CORS key for cross-origin resource sharing.
After uploading it to my web host, opening the file in a browser shows me the data in JSON format, as expected, which you can see live at http://zabuun.com/restdb.io/read.html
If you have JSON data as in the example above, you can use Handlebars.JS to format the output in HTML.
5. Query data
When reading data from RestDB , you will often want to filter data based on conditions rather than retrieve an entire collection (all records). RestDB supports many MongoDB-like query syntax. Read the docs. Here’s an example of RestDB queries for equivalent relational DB SQL queries.
You can also aggregate data, e.g. min, max, avg, count, groupby, etc, using aggregation and grouping functions. Read the docs.
If you already have an entire JSON dataset and you want to query against it, you can use JSONata. JSONata is a lightweight query and transformation language for JSON data.
6. Auto-generate a web form
If you want to create a web form for public use, you can have restdb.io auto-generate one for you, complete with JavaScript validation and code to publish the data to your restdb.io database. See an example at
Below is a screenshot of my remote filesystem on a shared GoDaddy server. The error.log file is auto-generated.
8. Create users with editor access
If you work with other developers or editors, you can give them role-based access to your restdb.io account to manage data. An editor, for example, will not see the developer features and can simply add records using a user-friendly web form like shown below.
