Code Tutorials Archives - Glenn Stovall

How to position an element at the end of a flexbox row

Flexbox rows may not work quite the way you think. If you want to have a row of elements, and you want to align one element at the end of the row, many CSS rules won’t work. Floats do not apply to elements using flex, so you can’t use a float:right like you would inside […]

Which version of JavaScript is “Vanilla JavaScript”?

There are so many different versions of JavaScript floating around, and browser support is always changing. How do you know which features you can use without transpiling or some kind of build step? Correct Answer: ES6 (a.k.a. ECMAS 2015) is supported in all major browsers. In April of 2017, all major browsers added support for […]

Pure Array Modifications: Plain JavaScript vs. Modern JavaScript

When working with Redux or other state managers, you want to keep your code pure. That means no side effects. Instead of updating an array instead you want to return a new copy of the array with the changes applied. This is tricky with JavaScript arrays since it isn’t clear which native functions change the […]

How to Update Content Based on URL params; No Libraries Required

If you’re a frequent user of Netflix or Amazon, then you’re familiar with how they use what they know about you to tailor their platform to your tastes. Personalization is an effective marketing technique. It makes you a more engaged customer, and more likely to get out your wallet. But you don’t have a team of […]

No More X-Frame-Options Errors: How to Use Multiple URLs in A Rails Shopify App

If you are trying to build a Shopify app in Ruby on Rails, you may run into an issue when you try to include a link to another path in the application. Open up your dev tools and you’ll see a message like this: Refused to display ‘https://96cbc4ff.ngrok.io/sync’ in a frame because it set ‘X-Frame-Options’ […]

A Workaround for CSV Upload Limits

Sometimes, applications have a limit on how many records you can import at once. Sometimes massive imports flag for a manual check, adding a roadblock to your work. Want to split one CSV into many quickly and avoid those pesky upload limits? Here’s a short bash script I use to split .csv files into multiple files while maintaining the header […]

How to Make an AJAX Request Without Using Frameworks or Libraries

There are a lot of JavaScript frameworks out there these days. It makes it harder to choose a front-end development workflow when starting a new project and write code that’s portable between different projects. Also, using a complex framework to solve a simple problem adds unneeded complexity and risk to a project, which makes getting that […]

A Real World Metaprogramming Case Study

Metaprogramming is one of the unique features of Ruby. Metaprogramming is an interesting concept, and a tool can save a lot of time. It can also be confusing for developers and difficult to maintain if not used properly. Here is an example of how I used Metaprogramming to solve a real-world problem and save a […]

How to Remove the Hash From Angular Routes in Rails

When building client-side applications, your URLs are prepended with a hash. Removing this can make your routes more user-friendly and more easily crawled by search engines. Here is how you can remove the hash from your routes in an Angular app built on Ruby on Rails, and use the standard URL structure.

Building Reliable Web Applications

These are notes and links from a presentation I gave to the Developers of Athens on testing client-side applications.

Testing AngularJS With Karma + Jasmine

In a previous article about Yeoman, AngularJS, and Foundation, I talked about setting up a complete front-end scaffold with Yeoman, AngularJS, and Foundation. Now I want to look at how to test the AngularJS part of your application.

How to Test Controller Concerns in Rails 4

Concerns are a new feature that was added in Rails 4. They allow to clean up the code in your models and controllers. They also allow you to share functionality between models or controllers. However, they can be a bit tricky to test in isolation. In this article, I want to show how you can […]

AngularJS: an Overview

AngularJS is a JavaScript framework made by Google for building complex client-side applications. Angular’s killer feature is ‘directives’ that allow you to extend HTML by creating tags and attributes. Angular projects have a somewhat different structure than other JavaScript MVC frameworks, but it can be highly modular and easy to maintain once you understand the […]

My Eureka Moment With Regular Expressions

Regular expressions are a tough cookie for most programmers to figure out. They are terrifying to look at with their daunting syntax. There is also nothing quite like regular expressions anywhere in programming. Programmers may learn to hack together basic regex expressions, or how to cut and paste some they find online for their needs, […]

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