Category: web dev

  • Installing a Node app on a server

    Before I write a fancy Ansible playbook to automatically set up the Nginx/Node combo on my web servers, it might be worth going through how to deploy a Node app so it can run on a server without you being logged in. Until now, I’ve been running my tests on my laptop, or in a…

  • Unlearning Relational DB

    Some of my first university programming was writing CICS COBOL transactions against IBM’s DB2 relational database. My commercial work after uni was mostly written in Clipper which was a sort of compiled version of dBase and used the same data file format. The minimal web work I did in the before times relied on MySQL.…

  • How to deploy a Node.js app

    This is one of those things that is simple once you know it. I had my tiny Node service working on my MacBook, but how do I run it on the server? Native or Container Obviously I need Node.js installed on the server, should I have it in a Docker container, or native on the…

  • Using Node.js to return a static file

    As mentioned in the previous post, stage one is just to return the same static text file, but from the Node server, rather than NGINX. That’s non-trivial to a rank beginner since I need to figure out 1) how to serve a static file from Node, and 2) how to configure NGINX to hand off…

  • Complicating the Temperature API

    I’ve been slammed with other work, so my web dev learning has fallen well behind. Luckily, the YouTube procrastination algorithm noticed this and suggested I watch a video from CodeWithCon titled Learn Backend in 10 MINUTES. Since I was watching a video of a guy learning to land a C152 at St Baths (a skill…

  • Installing SSL Certificates with Nginx on Docker

    When you’ve successfully got Nginx running in a Docker container, AND got your domain correctly pointing at your nascent website, you’re then going to want to set it up for encrypted, and therefore trusted, browsing with SSL. Certificates A couple of posts ago, I mentioned that it was simpler to let Porkbun be the authoritative…

  • Your own Aussie server on BinaryLane

    Listening to podcasts, I’ve been jealous of US developers who seem to have masses of $5/month VPS (Virtual Private Server) options. When I looked for similar Australian offerings a few months ago, they all seem to start at around $35 which is outside of my ‘have a play with something’ budget range. I could of…

  • Expired Packages Part II

    Following on from the previous post… I went the nuclear route – deleted the node_modules folder, package-lock.json and installed the packages from packages.json. I still had some errors, but the react app at least ran correctly. Also, the messages are a bit more intelligible, and all of them cascade from this one. From my, admittedly…

  • Expired packages

    At several points in the Complete Web Developer course, deprecated packages have been used, with the slide before the video explaining what’s happening, and giving a work around, or sometimes – as is the case for the bit I’m just starting – exhorting the benefits of dropping you into a non-working mess and having you…

  • CodePen

    I think I’ve written about CodePen before, its a site that allows users to quickly put together HTML, CSS & JS and see the results as they edit. Users ‘pens’ are public and can be tagged, so it also serves as a repository of examples. It’s possible to host incredibly complex artefacts, such as this…