Quick Test Post – Sorry! / / No Comments Hey folks, earlier this week I posted about a Pipedream workflow to automatically post new blog entries to Mastodon and Twitter. I discovered an issue with the workflow that ended up being a bug on the Pipedream side. (It happens!) They’ve corrected the issue and I need to test, so I’ve temporarily disabled Mastodon posting and am writing this post just to see if it posts correctly to Twitter. If so, I’ll then restore the Mastodon step (Pipedream makes it easy to disable one part of a workflow) and see what happens when I post again. As I feel guilty "spamming" my subscribers with noise, here’s a quick tip. If you ever need to expose a local web site for external... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Post, Quick, Sorry, test
Create a Thumbnail From a Video with ffmpeg / / No Comments Creating a thumbnail to represent a video is a frequent task when presenting media on a website. I previously created a shell script to create a preview video from a larger video, much like many adult sites provide. Let’s view how we can create a preview thumbnail from a video! Developers can use `ffmpeg, an incredible open source media utility, to create a thumbnail. To create a thumbnail from the first frame of a video, execute the following command: ffmpeg -i input.webm -vf "select=eq(n\,34)" -vframes 1 thumbnail.png Providing a video thumbnail is a great tool convert images into video views. You don’t need fancy software and manual labor to create thumbnails — use... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: create, ffmpeg, from, Thumbnail, video
Convert Fahrenheit to Celsius with JavaScript / / No Comments The United States is one of the last bodies that refuses to implement the Celsius temperature standard. Why? Because we’re arrogant and feel like we don’t need to change. With that said, if you code for users outside the US, it’s important to provide localized weather data to users. Let’s took at how you can convert between Fahrenheit and Celsius. Fahrenheit to Celsius The formula to convert Fahrenheit to Celsius is: °C = 5/9 x (°F - 32) The following function converts Fahrenheit to Celsius: function convertFahrenheitToCelsius(degrees) { return Math.floor(5 / 9 * (degrees - 32)); } Celsius to Fahrenheit The formula to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit is: °F = (°C... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Celsius, Convert, Fahrenheit, JavaScript
A Bare-Bones Eleventy Template for Glitch / / No Comments A few weeks ago I blogged about a simple Alpine.js template for Glitch projects. I’m still new to Glitch and wanted to give it a whirl with an Eleventy demo I wanted to share. Glitch has an Eleventy template, but it’s a bit verbose. It sets up a basic blog with sample posts and such, and that’s great to learn, but if you already know Eleventy, you may prefer to start off a bit simpler. With that in mind, I created this repository: https://github.com/cfjedimaster/glitch-eleventy It defines an .eleventy.js file that specifies an input and output directory. It sets up a very basic HTML layout and an empty index page that uses it. I also used Liquid for my demo whereas the Glitch-provided... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: BareBones, Eleventy, Glitch, Template
How to Use window.crypto in Node.js / / No Comments I’ve been writing a bunch of jest tests recently for libraries that use the underlying window.crypto methods like getRandomValues() and window.crypto.subtle key management methods. One problem I run into is that the window.crypto object isn’t available, so I need to shim it. To use the window.crypto methods, you will need Node 15+. You can set the window.crypto by importing the crypto package and setting it on the global: const crypto = require('crypto').webcrypto; // Shims the crypto property onto global global.crypto = crypto; I really loathe creating mock functions for missing libraries in Node because they can lead to faulty positives on tests; I really appreciate webcrypto... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Node.js, window.crypto
How to Internationalize Numbers with JavaScript / / No Comments Presenting numbers in a readable format takes many forms, from visual charts to simply adding punctuation. Those punctuation, however, are different based on internationalization. Some countries use , for decimal, while others use .. Worried about having to code for all this madness? Don’t — JavaScript provides a method do the hard work for you! The Number primitive has a toLocaleString method to do the basic formatting for you: const price = 16601.91; // Basic decimal format, no providing locale // Uses locale provided by browser since none defined price.toLocaleString(); // "16,601.91" // Provide a specific locale price.toLocaleString('de-DE'); // "16.601,91" // Formatting... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Internationalize, JavaScript, numbers
How to Extend Prototypes with JavaScript / / No Comments One of the ideological sticking points of the first JavaScript framework was was extending prototypes vs. wrapping functions. Frameworks like MooTools and Prototype extended prototypes while jQuery and other smaller frameworks did not. Each had their benefits, but ultimately all these years later I still believe that the ability to extend native prototypes is a massive feature of JavaScript. Let’s check out how easy it is to empower every instance of a primitive by extending prototypes! Every JavaScript native, like Number, String, Array, Object, etc. has a prototype. Every method on a prototype is inherited by every instance of that object. For example, we can provide every `Array... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Extend, JavaScript, Prototypes
Quick LiquidJS + Eleventy Example – All Posts / / No Comments So, on a whim today I decided to add a page to my blog to display every single post, separated by year. This was not meant to be used by anyone (hence me not linking to it in the nav), but something I’ve wanted around for a while. I’ve got a nice search form here, but sometimes I want to search for something I blogged a few weeks ago and having a simple list of posts would be useful. I didn’t want to build "proper" pagination, just one giant list in on an HTML page. That’s not the best UX but as I’m building this for me, I approve. I thought it would be a quick little script, but as I built it, I ran into a few interesting... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: Eleventy, example, LiquidJS, posts, Quick