-
Spring Boot template project
Using Spring Boot one can quickly create a simple REST server with sophisticated data access (using Spring Data repositories) as well as a well-defined REST API (using Spring Data Rest). However, getting it going takes a lot of initial effort and there are a few gotchas that need to be taken into account (for example […]
-
QNAP NAS Checking File System
Recently, I had the following warning about the file system being “unclean” on my QNAP NAS and, when running the “Check file system” command from the Admin Web interface, this failed stating that the disk could not be unmounted. Further investigation revealed that the culprit was Apache Proxy (apache_pr) that was keeping open files on […]
-
MongoDays SF 2014
MongoDB 2.8 is about to exit from beta and 3.0 is round the corner (probably early 2015) with a lot of exciting new features. My (raw and unedited) notes from some of the technical session are available here, I will add more as I discover new things.
-
Using ScalaTest with Play 2 Framework (Scala)
The default testing framework in Play 2 is specs2, however I prefer to use ScalaTest as I quite like it and I’m more familiar with it. Setting up the sbt project and configuration to make it work, though, turned out to be unnecessarily tricky and cumbersome. Here is eventually what I did to make it […]
-
Code Reviews
As anyone who has worked with me is well aware, I’m a great believer in code reviews – there is much to be said about a number of positive impacts on the project (and the developers’ professional growth too). This is a great article that sums up very well the benefits, as well as a […]
-
REST-based User Management web service in Scala
Today I’ve opened access to my sentinel repo which is still at a very early stage development, but I thought was worth sharing with others. I’ve been using Scala on and off for the past couple of years, since I’ve completed the Coursera Scala course (passed with 95% and distinction, obviously!); however, to really learn a language (and […]
-
Hiring Great Developers
This blog entry was a good write-up of many of the hiring practices I believe in too, and that I summarized in my previous post on people; and how they do make a massive difference in the outcomes of a technology company – no matter how good (or bad) the underlying technology. A couple of points […]
-
Deploying a Flask App to AWS Beanstalk
Overview Deploying an application to AWS using Beanstalk and setting up autoscaling, monitoring and a number of other super useful features is very simple, and is extremely well-documented on AWS site. However, even when following the Beanstalk and Flask Getting Started guide, there are a few gotchas and areas that are less than clear. In the […]
-
Authenticating via LaunchKey
I recently came across LaunchKey and decided to try out their authentication API – the `gist` presented here is an example Flask (python) server that demonstrates how to authenticate a user using their APIs and return back an application-specific API KEY that can then subsequently be used to sign (and therefore authenticate) all subsequent requests. […]
-
Email alerts via Mandril API (Python)
I have a QNAP NAS (TS-212) which runs a variety of jobs for me, most notably all my backups to external USB drive(s) and other assorted tasks: I often find myself `tailing` logs to check they ran without issues – this works, but it’s tedious and error conditions (eg, a malfunctioning disk) may go unnoticed […]
Code Trips & Tips
Adventures in developing distributed systems in Go, Java , Python and C++
Code Trips & Tips 