Building a Form Handling Service in Val Town / / No Comments Many years ago, I made the switch from building primarily app-server backed sites (using Node, ColdFusion, PHP, etc) to fully static sites using tools like Jekyll, Hugo, and Eleventy. For the most part, it was a great shift in how I build, but there were a few things I had to figure out in that new world – one of them was simple form handling. While I could have used serverless just fine, it felt like overkill. Luckily, there were a few services out there that catered to this need. You would simply use a unique action for your form and that service would handle collecting the form data, emailing it to you, and redirecting the user back to the site. A great example of this, and one I used... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: building, form, handling, service, Town
BoxLang’s Improved PDF Handling / / No Comments I’ve blogged about PDF support in BoxLang previously, including a quick introduction and a more robust demo later. Basically, the free PDF module provides excellent PDF creation capabilities out of the box. But what about PDF manipulation? My last two jobs involved PDF APIs, and while my next one most certainly does not (thank god), it’s still a feature near and dear to my heart. The BoxLang folks have made a shockingly huge amount of updates over the past few months, more than I’ve had a chance to keep up with, but one in particular caught my eye and I thought I’d call it out – the new PDF+ module. BoxLang’s commercial modules are part of the BoxLang+ plan.... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: BoxLang's, handling, improved
A Tip for Properly Handling Loading States in Web Apps / / No Comments This isn’t something I was going to blog about, but after seeing the same issue a few times recently (although to be fair, last in a mobile game), I thought I’d share it with my audience. I apologize if the title isn’t the best as it was a hard issue to describe, so let me begin by demonstrating the problem, and then the (hopefully) obvious solution. Loading Data # Here’s a super simple example of a web page that loads some data from the API. In this case, it’s the Star Wars API which, unfortunately, has been pretty slow recently. On the flip side, that helps illustrate that issue. The HTML is just an h2 and an empty ul and the JavaScript is fairly simple: document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded',... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: apps, handling, Loading, properly, States
Simplify Your File Handling With Filestack Workflows (Sponsored) / / No Comments Automation is a really important skill for engineers, especially when it comes to working with various file types. The more you accept for input, and the more you automate, the better end output you can offer. Filestack’s workflows allow developers to define automated tasks using a their specialized UI. With no coding required, it’s easy to create a document workflow and scan every assignment for viruses, quarantine it until it can be reviewed, and alert the sender of the issue so that no work is late. After signing up for a free Filestack account, you can shift to creating your own workflows. When creating your workflow, you can choose from dozens of UI items that represent... more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: file, Filestack, handling, Simplify, Sponsored, Workflows
CheerpJ Java-to-JavaScript compiler boosts exception handling, native methods – InfoWorld / / No Comments CheerpJ Java-to-JavaScript compiler boosts exception handling, native methods InfoWorld “JavaScript” – Google News… more → Posted in: JavaScript Tagged with: boosts, CheerpJ, compiler, exception, handling, InfoWorld, JavatoJavaScript, methods, native