Category Archives: Web Development

Items related to web development. HTML, CSS, JavaScript, JQuery, PHP and sundry.

Just bought some eBooks on Kubernetes

A container coordinator isn’t something that is all that likely to be important to me in the immediate future but given that docker keeps showing up in java spring related tutorials I’m inclined to take a look at the technology.

It sounds as if the docker equivalent has largely fallen flat and kubernetes  is the solution I’m seeing most frequently out there.  I’m not sure when I’ll find time to do more than skim these, but interesting technology is always worth a look…

Finished my quick read of ‘Learning JavaScript’

Came across a few items I had not seen before. WeakMap and the Map and Set types in ES6 look useful. I think I had seen the map, reduce and filter methods on array but had not really considered their usefulness.

There were probably a bunch of other minor items that I picked up along the way. All in all, worth the small investment of time. I learned a few things and can feel more comfortable that there aren’t core concepts that I’ve missed by jumping into the middle up front.

One day soon I’ll likely read through the ES6 standard document. Ultimately that is the only way to hit all of the high points (missing details of products specific quirks, but then that is what the other books can do).

What I really need to do now is put together a small node based sandbox project with a web UI on the front end…

Backfilling on JavaScript…Touching base with the basics

I’ve been doing some deep dives into TypeScript and JavaScript and related technologies. Much of that has been looking at newer features and advanced topics.

I’m now reading through O’Reilly’s Learning Javascript to make sure I’ve covered the basics and pick up any language idioms I may have missed along the way. I expect this to be a quick read as I’m pretty familiar with the language and tools. Once I’m done I should feel good about having filled in any gaps that may have been present previously. Continue reading Backfilling on JavaScript…Touching base with the basics

More Functional Programming and some MERN

Functional and Haskell

I’ve been reading through the Haskell book I bought (the C# functional programming book isn’t here yet). So far, Haskell functional programming still looks like a gimmick more than a set of useful tools. I’ll keep reading through to the end and likely play with the language a little before I’m done.

I’m looking forward to the C# functional programming book as I’m hoping it will provide a more practical view of what functional methods bring to the table. Working in a hybrid environment should allow the best of both worlds to shine and allow any awkward spots on one side of the other to be worked around.

MERN and Bootstrap and Things…

I’ve also been rummaging through a book on using node with react rather than angular 2/4. Seems like an interesting option as react sounds less proscriptive than angular. As with angular 2 the react tool still needs a CSS library and also similarly this book suggests bootstrap.

I need to sit down and code up a simple sample program that self-hosts a web server (probably OWIN based) and presents a web UI and perhaps a handful of RESTful web methods as a trial. Not sure whether I’ll go with react or angular 2 for this. Stay tuned…

Oh…also picked up ‘Learning Bootstrap 4, Second Edition‘ to read a bit more about bootstrap along the way. The Amazon web UI framework was bootstrap derived I believe so I expect this to  be somewhat familiar…

I am looking at self-hosting partly because node doesn’t play as nicely with windows as it does with linux and I’m mostly windows based. It is also rather nice to have a one-stop simple web UI hosting option that can get access to native code as needed. The NSSM package seems as if it provides a reasonable way to host something like node as a boot time startup service…I’ll probably play with that at some point.

Interesting…there is a package manager for windows called ‘Chocolatey‘ that seems to be an option for deploying NSSM… 

Continuing to read about functional programming

Functional programming techniques are becoming more mainstream (and more generally useful) and I’ve been doing some reading to come up to speed.

I’ve just ordered a book on Haskell. Haskell seems to be the functional programming equivalent to SmallTalk for object oriented design…a pure functional language.

 

I’ve also ordered a book on functional programming in C#. While C# isn’t a purely functional language, I am far more likely to build things in C#. I’m expecting the combination of these two books to give me a decent combination of theory and useful practice.

Javascript is really where I first began running into functional approaches. I’m still working on getting my javascript up to where I’d like it to be. The javascript world is currently pretty hard to keep up with as things continue changing at a frantic rate. I’m expecting to spend a weekend soon adding a self hosted web UI to one of my ongoing sandbox projects…probably something Angular 2 with a C# back end, but we’ll see…

Continue reading Continuing to read about functional programming

Hmm…and Kestrel in .NET Core

Ok..and Kestrel seems to be the .NET Core alternative to the OWIN stuff under .NET classic.

Yet another option…in my case the OWIN side is likely more interesting as I’m almost certainly going to be doing things that need interop or similar windows-centric functionality. Interesting as a Linux facing option though. May also be lower overhead in cases where a particular micro-service doesn’t need access to native capabilities.

I am also expecting to need some sort of SSL certificate to enable TLS on these links (don’t need the full commercial cert probably as these are likely going to be expose by IP address and not on the open web). I need to understand what is needed to deploy TLS, ideally with cert verification on both ends using certs I’ve created myself and that don’t correspond to a particular URL.

In this case I’m looking to ensure no MITM attacks and to encrypt the traffic but not to ensure much more than that. I don’t want further authentication to leak and I want to protect the connection (for example for a web UI on a small ‘appliance’ that may at times be exposed to an open internet connection).

Mostly saving these to read/watch in more detail later. Options on top of options here…

C#: Self Hosting Web UI or WPF?

I continue to bounce back and forth between self-hosted web UI and WPF UI for implementing simple user interactions.

WPF is likely to be easier to build the right sort of thing with but is a bit less flexible and more ‘backward looking’. Web interfaces require a self-hosting solution if they’re going to be stand-alone and cross more lines of language and environment.

On balance the web UI path is better as a learning experience and aside from a few corner-cases (OpenGL say) likely to  result in a better user experience in the long run.

I’m still looking for the right self-hosting solution and UI framework solution. I’m going to have to settle on one shortly so that I can being experimenting in the ninecrows sandbox and getting a feel for the technology.

Current links of interest on the self-hosting front:

There also seem to be some hard choices between versions of the framework…classic and core in particular.

More to learn as things move forward. I expect I’ll wind up doing things with both/all before I’m done as they have different strengths. The sorts of things a WPF/WinForms/MFC UI can do in terms of digging into the system and being screen real-estate aware along make them of great interest.

Windows services with single page web apps

I’m getting things going on some sandbox software projects that have been sitting on the shelf for some time. Perhaps a bit spread out but should be interesting.

I want to be able to put together free-standing service applications that expose both RESTful programmatic control and single page interactive GUIs without involving an external web server.

Looking like C# and either OWIN or .NET core as the sweet spot here. Need to choose a javascript library for the client side bits…Angular2 seems interesting but may be more involved for first attempts than I want.

I’ve also signed up for several of the sale Udemy courses…started out with an impulse buy of the Unreal Engine Programming course and an associated Blender course. Added in some Angular, Node and web programming stuff. Probably more in there than I’ll have time to get to,  but at $10 each I can deal.

Definitely need to come up to speed more on the various web programming environments and tools as they’re looking like the right way to do UI at this point. Leaves me with ASP.NET, Node and Apache with PHP, Javascript, C# and Typescript on the plate 🙂 Each of these shows up somewhere in my environments of interest. Should be fun…

Web Implementation Options for SandBox Projects

Looking at some sandbox projects that need web interfaces.

Winding up with a big split here

  • PHP/Apache (LAMP) for real site work.
    Anything that needs to run up here on my hosting will be something LAMP-like. Code needs to be PHP (at least locally) with back end persistence in MySQL.
    Front end should be more flexible. As long as the back ends can provide what the browser side code needs all should be good.
  • IIS/ASP.NET looks like the easiest choice (with .net core MVC as the tool set) for windows integrated work. I have a few things that want to run locally on a system but present a web interface externally. These tools should provide lots of ‘traction’ with close windows integration. Probably an Angular front end and perhaps a full service on the back-end.
  • Node.js shows up in many places. It provides a fast to deploy web server that is flexible and easy to code for. It is on my list in part because it has been showing up in places that are interesting and it part because it promises to support light-weight tasks where IIS would seem like over-kill.

For the front ends there are a huge number of choices out there. Of the ones I’ve seen

  • Angular 2 seems to be pretty capable and well respected. I expect to do at least some work with Angular and if it proves easy to work with I may focus on it.
  • Bootstrap is older (I think) but appears to provide a similar set of tools and infrastructure. If I run into issues with Angular, I may give this a try for something small and see how well it works.

I am also looking at free-standing, light weight web server options that run in C#. This is primarily aimed at RESTful interfaces to back-end code. OWIN and Katana seem to promise something like this while on the C++ side (and I expect C++ will show up now and then) microhttpd looks promising (with GPL restrictions, but these are sandbox projects).

Currently doing quite a bit of reading. Soon I’ve got to kick off from reading and get to some doing. Not sure what I’ll tackle first but I will probably try to list the things I’d like to kick around before I pick one…stay tuned.