Iodocs is a node.js application (which is fun for a PHP developer. Most developers write a bit of JS, but this one hasn’t). You describe your API and all its methods in JSON, and then iodocs presents an interface for you to enter API keys, add parameters to each request and press the “try it!” button. This makes your API call and shows you the results on screen, which seems like a great way to demonstrate what all the various parameters do!
Category Archives: tech
Do Open Source with Git and Github
Often I find absolutely competent programmers, who aren’t involved in open source, either because they don’t know how to approach a project, or because they just aren’t sure how the process even works. In this article we’ll look at one example, the conference feedback site joind.in, and how you can use GitHub to start contributing code to this project. Since so many projects are hosted on github, this will help you get started with other projects, too.
The tl;dr Version for the Impatient
- Fork the main repo so you have your own github repo for the project
- Clone your repo onto your development machine
- Create a branch
- Make changes, commit them
- Push your new branch to your github repository
- Open a pull request
This article goes through this process in more detail, so you will be able to work with git and github projects as you please.
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Posting Raw Data with Curl
I put the data into a separate file, data.txt
and then used curl to direct that data at my local URL:
curl -X POST http://localhost/app/test.php --data @data.txt
I find this approach useful for testing, but since I had to look up how to do it, I thought I’d put it here for reference!
The Quest for a Payment Gateway
I recently carved out some time to correct this situation, and fell into an absolute pit of confusion when I tried to figure out what my options even were. My requirements are that my customers are global, I am UK-based, people will set up a regular subscription, and I don’t have (and I think I don’t want) a merchant account at this point. I’m not PCI compliant and have no intention ever to attempt that. This post is an attempt to round up some things I found out along the way. Continue reading
Two Years of Trading
Lesson Learned: Look in the Pull Request Queue
Monday Git Tips
git log
and git show
and in particular two of my favourite existing tricks:Continue reading
Pushing to Different Git Remotes
- there is a gatekeeper that manages merging to here
- all developers have write access
In this case, I’m working with the second option, so I’m pushing to the upstream repo. I’m also pushing to a live repository as well, so I thought I’d outline the commands I’m using. The setup here is the main github repo, and I have my own fork of that, which is cloned onto my laptop. I can push to both that main repo, which I’ll call “upstream” (because the github documentation does and it makes sense!) and another repo that I’ll call “live”. All in all it looks something like this:
Downloading Files from Faspex
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How the Web Looks to Me
I navigate the web using the Keyboard Navigation extension in Google Chrome, which is what is adding all the little labels you see in the screenshot above. Install the extension, and press comma. The labels will pop up, then you type whichever character(s) show next to the thing you want to “click” on, and off you go.
It’s super-simple, and easier to use than I expected. Why don’t you try it out on your own sites? You’ll get a sense of how the web looks from where I’m standing :)