Community Posts

Node.js is on the rise in the IBM i ecosystem. People are taking notice, but there is still a misconception among some that Node.js and other open source software are difficult to install on IBM i. This article aims to show just how easy peasy it is to get Node.js installed, configured, and running fine on IBM i. Prerequisite This article assumes that you have yum installed and accessible on your IBM i instance. Read more → about Node.js on IBM i: Easy Peasy

As a developer, I want to keep my code as DRY as is feasible for the given project. In a Hugo project, that’s where the Partial templates come in. Partials are smaller, context-aware components in your list and page templates that can be used economically to keep your templating DRY. Partials, however, have one serious limitation, they’re cached during the build of a given page (or scope). Once a partial has been created, no outside logic can adjust what the partial returns (for the page). Read more → about How to Pass Variables to a Partial Template in Hugo

Making sure webistes are accessible is a big deal these days. Websites should be mindful of their audience to make sure people with disabilities are not excluded from the site content. Color contrasts between foregrounds and backgrounds is an easy miss when checking that a site is accessible, but one that is vital to hard of sight users. Read more → about Contrast Ratio Calculator

Due to community feedback about the install process and usage of my IBM i Dotfiles, I have decided to create a command line interface (CLI) and an RPM to install the aforementioned CLI. Welcome the IBM i CLI RPM and SoBored RPM Repo. This was also an experiment for myself to learn how to build RPMs and host an RPM repo. I have a feeling that I’ll be adding more RPMs over time. Read more → about IBM i Dotfiles CLI RPM & SoBored RPM Repo

A Static Website I had a great conversation with a friend from work about doing some devblog stuff. Till then, I hadn’t heard of generating static web pages, especially not with some content generator. I was intrigued to say the least. Here we are, writing a devblog and utilizing some cool stuff. The only problems I have with this plan: The phrase devblog is not my favorite, and I’m not great at writing. Read more → about Setting up a static site in S3

Inspecting OpenEdge metadata with SQL OpenEdge’s virtual system tables (VSTs) provide excellent statistics that help in database development and maintenance. This article shows a few SQL statements that help reveal information about the database. SQL to query metadata Show all VST tables that contain metadata. Find columns in a table Show all the indexes on a table Assuming UPDATE TABLE STATISTICS AND INDEX STATISTICS AND ALL COLUMN has been run, get # of records for each table. Read more → about Inspecting OpenEdge metadata with SQL

Viewing query plan with SQL in OpenEdge It is important to review query plan produced by the database and improve queries from time to time. OpenEdge generates query plan for the queries you write. This article shows how to view query plan in OpenEdge. View query plan Let’s say the query below is taking a long time: When this query is executed, _sql_plan table is populated with information about how the query was processed. Read more → about Viewing query plan with SQL in OpenEdge

I love create-react-app. I’ve used it as the boilerplate generator for the last 4 projects I’ve worked on. I’ve tried other React boilerplates, but always come back because of it’s great foundation, as well as it’s ability to be ejected and customized. One thing I miss dearly is hot reloading. React Hot Loader is, in my opinion, one of the killer features of React that makes it better/faster to develop with than any other front-end technology I’ve ever used. Read more → about Add React Hot Reloading to create-react-app

This week at work I was faced with a bug that manifested as Windows XP clients being slower to access parts of a web interface than Windows 7 or 10. This was strange because in Wireshark the requests looked basically the same. It turned out that the embedded system hosting the web interface was rejecting Ethernet frames larger than 1500 bytes. This was most likely because of a misinterpretation of the MTU as referring to the frame size (at layer 2) instead of the payload size (at layer 3). Read more → about Windows XP and Slow HTTP Requests

I had an interesting request from a client today. They use Pardot to integrate with the forms on their old website, and wanted to do the same with their new WordPress theme. We’re using the always spectacular Gravity Forms for the forms on the site. I did the integrations, and we got an error. I didn’t realize (but now it makes perfect sense) that Gravity Forms defaults to enctype=”multipart/form-data”. I scoured the Gravity Forms settings, looking for a way to switch that to the correct enctype without any luck. Read more → about So You Want to Change the Gravity Forms Form Tag…