Writing an iOS App on Your Phone with play.js

play.js is an interesting iOS app that acts as an IDE for Node.js and React Native. It’s a weird concept, but the thought of being able to create an app for my phone by using an app for my phone was too fun to pass up.

Fake or Mock an API with JSON Server

JSON Server is an easy and quick-to-set-up module that you can use to fake or mock an API. You can find the basics in the documentation, and many articles regurgitate the same info. In this post, though, I intend to cover a few of the more complex things you can do with JSON Server.

Correctly Managing Concurrency in JavaScript

More times than I can count, I’ve found myself needing better concurrency primitives in JavaScript (or TypeScript) applications. Almost anything you might need is possible using the Promise API, but promises are complex, and there are many subtleties that easily manifest bugs.

An Intro to React Navigation for React Native

When you first sit down to write a React Native app, you’ll find that after making your first screen, you don’t have an easy way to navigate to another. React Native doesn’t have that functionality built in, but in this post, I’ll outline how to use a library that makes it possible: React Navigation.

Eliminate Circular Dependencies from Your JavaScript Project

Circular dependencies (also known as cyclic dependencies) occur when two or more modules reference each other. This could be a direct reference (A -> B -> A): // file a.ts import { b } from 'b'; ... export a; // file b.ts import { a } from 'a'; ... export b; or indirect (A -> […]

Avoid Careless Production Mistakes with Custom Scripts

In the wise words of @stahnma, “Everybody has a testing environment. Some people are lucky enough to have a totally separate environment to run production in.” Thankfully, the project I’m working on has multiple environments: production (the most recently-released version), staging (for pre-release testing), dev (for dev team use and testing), and multiple review apps […]

Incrementally Building My Own Code Health Tool

Recently, I’ve been looking for ways to improve the code health of a project I’m working on. It’s a pretty big team, so things are moving quickly. While the codebase is in good shape now, little things can quickly spiral out of control.

PDF Snapshot Testing with Node and GraphicsMagick

The task I am working on this week involves generating downloadable PDF files for customer and supplier orders. We’d like to drive the implementation using tests and be able to find any regressions in the code automatically. After looking at different alternatives for accomplishing this, we decided to try a visual snapshot approach similar to […]

Five Chrome DevTools Tips for Troubleshooting Web Apps

I recently needed to find and fix a bug in a web app I’ve been working on. The bug had something to do with code that was updating the dimensions of a third-party generated UI component whenever the window was resized. While troubleshooting the issue, I repeatedly used a handful of the tools provided by […]

An Introduction to Property-Based Testing with JavaScript

Property-based testing is a powerful technique that’s been widely and successfully applied to functional-style codebases for a long time. As functional programming continues to get more and more popular among JavaScript developers, the value of this style of testing is becoming more obvious to a wider audience.

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