Systems | Development | Analytics | API | Testing

February 2023

An Introduction to Test Factories and Fixtures for Elixir

Writing tests is an essential part of any Elixir developer's routine. We're constantly chasing knowledge on how to write better tests, improving their speed and readability. In this three-part series, we'll explore test data generation in Elixir. Whether you are a mid-level or senior-level Elixir developer, this series will provide valuable insights to help improve the testing process for your projects.

Storing Ephemeral UI State with Kredis for Rails

Kredis (Keyed Redis) is a recent addition to the Rails developer's toolkit. It strives to simplify storing and accessing structured data on Redis. In this first part of a two-part series, we'll start by going into how Kredis works. We'll then run through an example use case for storing ephemeral UI state using a bespoke Redis key. Let's get started!

What's New in Rails 7.1

Rails 7 was a welcome release that brought a lot of significant features and changes. On the backend, Rails 7 introduced asynchronous query loading and Zeitwerk for autoloading. The frontend saw Hotwire becoming the default solution for new Rails apps. Rails 7.1 will add to these notable features. In this post, we'll discuss some noteworthy additions that are likely to be shipped.

Puppeteer in Node.js: Common Mistakes to Avoid

Puppeteer is a powerful Node.js browser automation library for integration testing and web scraping. However, like any complex software, it comes with plenty of potential pitfalls. In this article, I'll discuss a variety of common Puppeteer mistakes I've encountered in personal and consulting projects, as well as when monitoring the Puppeteer tag on Stack Overflow.

A Guide to Rails View Helpers

Views in Rails don't do much besides showcasing what we want. Sure, they might render slightly different results depending on who's watching (an admin or a logged-in user has a different experience than a guest user, for example), but they don't do much processing on what they're given. Or at least they shouldn't. Often though, Rails projects wind up with a lot of logic in their views. In this post, we'll explore how to use Rails helpers to keep our views clean and readable.

5 Node.js Tools to Learn in 2023

The Node ecosystem comes with a wide variety of tools that have continued to evolve over the years. These tools are delivered via NPM packages and run in the command line, making them accessible to any developer (you do not need a fancy IDE to get the job done). In this take, we will explore 5 Node tools to learn this year: TypeScript, ES modules, ESLint, the ESLint SpellCheck plugin, and Mocha. These all run via the command line and can help boost your productivity when working on Node projects.