The Agile method of software creation contains many principles of development that will help create good software. Some of my most successful projects have had as a key feature an agile designer. As Jobs said, design is how it works, and that means that to really deliver well in an agile environment...

Have you ever showed up in the App Store looking for an app in a particular category and been overwhelmed at the number of choices present? This is certainly the case for the drawing and art app category. But, there is at least one art app that stands out clearly from the others: "Paper" by FiftyThr...

Backbone.js is a great MV* library created by Jeremy Ashkenas. It is small and powerful, yet unopinionated. That means that it will let you walk straight into a pit. It so happens that I'm speaking to you now from the bottom of such a chasm. Do not fall into the same pit. As a guide to your travel, ...

Have you every wished you could change your node script and not restart the server? Restarting your node server after changing your script can get annoying. This is especially true if you're in guess and check mode, changing and checking a lot. Luckily, there are a few tools to save you the pain.Nod...

Have you ever wanted to do something special every nth time through a Handlebars loop? The built-in {{#each}} will loop through your items just fine. It lacks a few features. For one, you don't have access to the loop index, though you can find it. Without the index and simple comparisons like modul...

A few routes in a NodeJs app -- no problem. Just put them in your app.js. More than a handful? You'll probably want to look at organizing your routes a different way. This will help keep your core app.js clean and make your actual routes easier to find.Express RoutesThe favorite http framework on No...

When a company has a platform or API that it wants outside developers to create cool stuff on, it will sometimes create a developer relations group. This group will help developers get what they need. What about custom dev shops that already have a host of developers? Who's watching these developers...

Some might ask why a guy who loves his life of code would choose WordPress as the framework for one of his websites. Well, I chose a WordPress blog. I almost didn't. It's been a long time coming. It's early in the game, but I think it was a good choice.Why I wouldn't choose WordPress blogI only had ...

BusterJs is a still-in-beta library that allows for testing your Javascript. It's got a wealth of cool features. The browser capturing is awesome for running your Javascript directly in the browsers you choose from one runner. You can also execute within Node. In short, it rocks. But, how to get thi...

NodeJs can do many things. It can even run things that it can't do itself. For instance, I have a shell script that I don't want to rewrite in Javascript, so I want my Node app to run the shell script. No problemo.(Updated 22 Aug 2016)The docs indicate a number of ways you can kick off child process...

When you run a shell script or some other process from NodeJs and want to get the output in a stream to a client, you can redirect or pipe the output from the process that originally outputs to stdout into your socketio stream.First, setup socketio on your server as you normally would:var io = requi...

When you connect to a remote server, you're connecting over ssh or scp or a similar protocol. In each case, you may have to provide some authentication credentials to prove you are who you say you are. This can come in the form of a user/password combo, but if you're connecting a lot or if you're tr...

Often when building a single-page app, you'll want to optimize all your js into a single asset. RequireJs is a great mechanism for managing your js dependencies. It also comes with a great build tool for doing the optimization (r.js). But sometimes you won't want to put all your js into a single ass...

Have you ever tried to start up a local dev server and attach it to a port only to find that the port says it's already in use. Here's a quick way to find those zombies and kill 'em good.Server Startup MessagesWhen you go to start your server, you get your annoying error message that just irks you. ...

Through long-available browser quirks/features, javascript has been available for requests across disparate domains. But, other resources, such as text files (eg, handlebars templates) have had more restrictions placed on them. Recently, CORS support has enhanced the ability to make these requests. ...

Don't you hate developing a blasted simple webpage that does some asynchronous requests that gets you into cross-origin policy trouble. If you just read a .html file off the file system, this will bite you. But, it's easy to get around. Just host your .html file on a simple http server. And it's eas...

HandlebarsJs is a great Javascript templating engine. It's pretty much Mustache templates on steriods -- or Rogaine or something like that. Well, there's a great for loop, but it'd be cool if it had a loop index built in. It doesn't have one as of the current version (1.0.0.beta.6). But, we can make...

When ordering a sequence of items in XQuery, sometimes it's desirable to be able to decide the order based on a parameter value (something dynamic). XQuery doesn't look extremely elegant when it comes to this feature, but depending on exactly what you want, you should be able to get the job done.Sta...

BackboneJs is a great resource for creating rich UIs. Rich means interactive. Interactivity grows when the client can do more of the work of an application itself, becoming more reactive and dynamic to user feedback, able to be more event-driven, and hopefully more quick and responsive. Here's a sho...

If you have to store your text strings for internationalization (i18n) on the server, that's one thing. But, if you can store them in Javascript, you might think about using RequireJs and its i18n plugin, because it makes it nice and easy.Get the PluginRequireJs is a single download. It's an AMD-sty...

Our app throws all sorts of exceptions. Well, it doesn't usually. It shouldn't normally. Er... But, when it does we want to put in some handling so that the app doesn't blow up in some unsuspecting user's face. And even then, sometimes we want special handling for certain exceptions and make sure ot...

Spring Security (previously Acegi) gives you an awesome AOP way of locking down methods in your Java application. And well-placed lock down is a special power indeed. However, Spring disappoints a bit on this score because it turns out its default behavior is to 'or' the roles listed in @Secured ann...

Django comes with some awesome CLI tools. Manage.py is a beast of magic and lore. And it loves the fantastical kingdom of Heroku, where is romps with merry measure twixt the ether. But, when I've tried to go through a dumpdata of a previous site, syncdb on a migration to Heroku, and loaddata for mov...

In Java Land, everything is tied up in multiple layers of multi-colored wrapping paper. The abstraction often provides niceties and protections and convenience, etc. But, sometimes it practically makes you forget where you are. For instance, why would anyone write a little howto on requesting someth...

When you start writing applications with BackboneJS, that means that you're dealing with some dynamic UI. There are elements being pushed into and pulled out of the DOM. I was having problems trying to reference DOM elements that were dynamically inserted into the DOM by other Backbone views. The fi...

BackboneJS is setup to do some pretty sweet single-page app action. And of course, a single page app will probably be wanting to talk to web services on the server. And if your server code is doing the Java jive, then a great way to expose your REST services is via JAX-RS. It's as easy as Mikey sing...

In addition to some sweet Inversion of Control injection action, Spring brings flowers and baby deer. And it brings some nice database connection help. Spring JdbcTemplate is a vanguard of strength and ease for connecting to your favorite RDBMS. And it so happens that the DBA I'm working with right ...

As more application logic gets pushed into the browser for client-heavy apps, the need for javascript testing increases. Lately, I've been doing some Jasmine unit testing of an application that uses RequireJS. Here are some general pointers and potential pitfalls to watch for.Jasmine StandaloneAfter...

Backbone has a great inheritance mechanism. It's as easy as Backbone.Model.extend(). This much is obvious. Let's try a few other things, like: Subclassing our own classes, calling to super classes, adding subclass attributes, and adding various subclasses to a collection based on a super class.Let's...

Django's manage.py script comes with some great utilitarian commands. Two of my favorites are dumpdata and loaddata. I've used these commands recently to migrate a Django app's data to the same Django app now running on Heroku. Here's a little taste of the glory.Django is awesome. Heroku is awesome....