Posts

Laravel Valet for Production Domains

January 8, 2023 · 2 min read

Recently, after a brief outage at work, I wondered if it would be possible to replicate the problem locally using Laravel Valet. My Google search landed on this StackOverflow post, where the answers shot down the idea. Not to be dissuaded by something I read on the internet, I started investigating if it was possible and stumbled upon what I think is a viable solution. There aren't very many hoops to jump through or major quirks so I believe it's not only possible but could be supported out of the box.

In my case, I want to proxy the domain scdn-app.thinkorange.com through my local version of the Laravel application.

Edit ~/.config/valet/config.json on macOS and change the tld parameter from test to com.
Change to the directory of your application.
Run the command valet link scdn-app.thinkorange to set up our valet configuration to point the domain to this directory.
Run the command valet secure scdn-app.thinkorange to set up the SSL certificate.
Change the directory to dnsmasq cd ~/.config/valet/dnsmasq.d.
Copy the existing TLD config to cover the .com domain with the command cp tld-test.conf tld-com.conf.
Edit the new file to change the first address line to address=/.com/127.0.0.1 and save the file.
(Optionally) Isolate the site to PHP 8.1 with the command valet isolate --site scdn-app.thinkorange php@8.1.
Change your /etc/hosts file to redirect the domain to 127.0.0.1 for ipv4 and ::1. I use the excellent Gas Mask to make this step easier.

Now we should have a functional production proxy through our local machine. This configuration creates a few problems around keeping the com TLD. Fortunately, a few extra steps are necessary for us to switch back to .test while also keeping this site functional.

Edit ~/.config/valet/config.json again and change the tld parameter from com back to test. This change will immediately break our site.
Change to the Sites directory cd ~/.config/valet/Sites.
If we use ls -al to list the directory, we'll see our site scdn-app.thinkorange. Let's change that.
Run the command mv scdn-app.thinkorange scdn-app.thinkorange.com.

Our site should now be working again. We are also able to continue serving our previous local test domains.

Because we can create a permanently functional system using these steps, I believe it should be possible to create a pull request to reduce the number of hoops we have to jump through. I'd love to be able to run valet link scdn-app.thinkorange.com. with a period at the end to denote I'm including the full domain with TLD. That would eliminate the temporary step of editing the config.json file, and the Sites directory would just work(TM) as it would include the .com directory name. I don't believe we even need the dnsmasq changes as I'm able to navigate to a functional site without them. I believe Gas Mask is doing the work, but it's better to be safe than sorry.

If you'd prefer a YouTube video where I stumble through recreating these steps from scratch:

Livebook Autosaves

December 14, 2022 · 3 min read

Tell me if you've done this before. You write up a nice little prototype of an idea in Livebook. You then get distracted by life situations like eating, writing an email, or taking a nap. You feel the need to close Livebook or prune the multiple sessions you've had running for weeks now. Because you have a million tabs open (with a session manager) and too many in Livebook to individually check, you restart your computer and let it crash(TM). When you open up Livebook again, "Oh. Shiiiiit" you exclaim. Where the hell did that notebook go? I'm 100% sure I clicked the disk icon, what the hell? If you're like me, you may have created this forked Livebook from memory, possibly taking a better approach.

There is a better way to handle this scenario. Livebook has had autosaves since 0.4:

Other features include:

* auto-save
* JSON/XML syntax highlighting
* per user editor configuration
* and more!

See the CHANGELOG: https://t.co/mrlBDbDdyX
— Livebook (@livebookdev) December 5, 2021

The feature was added in this PR according to the changelog:

https://github.com/livebook-dev/livebook/pull/736

To find your autosave files:

For the Desktop application and CLI in production: ~/Library/Application Support/livebook/autosaved/.
- On my machine this expands to the absolute path /Users/jbrayton/Library/Application Support/livebook/autosaved/.
For the dev environment: in config/dev.exs, this is set as config :livebook, :data_path, Path.expand("tmp/livebook_data/dev".
- On my machine this expands to the absolute path /Users/Shared/repositories/personal/elixir/livebook/tmp/livebook_data/dev/autosaved/.
For the test environment: in config/test.exs this is set as Path.expand("tmp/livebook_data/test").
- On my machine this expands to the absolute path /Users/Shared/repositories/personal/elixir/livebook/tmp/livebook_data/test/autosaved/.

Notebooks are saved by day in the autosave directory and the date corresponds to when they were created (when you immediately click the New notebook button).

To view or change your autosave directory in the CLI:

Go to http://localhost:8080/settings
Or, if you're already in a notebook, click the Livebook icon in the top left and click Settings under the Home and Learn links.

For the Desktop application, the port will be randomized but you can either change the URL to tack on /settings after the port or click around to the settings page as described earlier.

Tracing the Default Setting

If you are curious as to how this setting gets configured, we can start by looking at Livebook.Settings.default_autosave_path() in https://github.com/livebook-dev/livebook/blob/main/lib/livebook/settings.ex#L32-L34. We follow Livebook.Config.data_path() to https://github.com/livebook-dev/livebook/blob/main/lib/livebook/config.ex#L76-L78 then the Erlang function :filename.basedir(:user_data, "livebook").

Running this in Livebook we get the output "/Users/jbrayton/Library/Application Support/livebook", precisely where the desktop app stores its files.

Finding Files

What lead me to this discovery, after vaguely remembering autosave was a thing, was looking for files on my computer. I purposefully install and use the locate command because I find it far easier to use than remembering the find -name syntax.

Here's the output for checking that the word autosave is in any directory or file name:

⋊> ~ locate autosaved/ 
/Users/Shared/repositories/personal/elixir/livebook/tmp/livebook_data/dev/autosaved/2022_10_31/18_25_03_mapset_drills_hedh.livemd
/Users/Shared/repositories/personal/elixir/livebook/tmp/livebook_data/dev/autosaved/2022_11_03/18_12_21_teller_bank_challenge_pv4e.livemd
/Users/Shared/repositories/personal/elixir/livebook/tmp/livebook_data/dev/autosaved/2022_11_03/18_13_39_untitled_notebook_pidb.livemd
/Users/Shared/repositories/personal/elixir/livebook/tmp/livebook_data/dev/autosaved/2022_11_03/19_31_57_dockyard_academy_amas_p75r.livemd
/Users/Shared/repositories/personal/elixir/livebook/tmp/livebook_data/dev/autosaved/2022_11_03/20_02_17_intro_to_timescale_jm7r.livemd
/Users/Shared/repositories/personal/elixir/livebook/tmp/livebook_data/dev/autosaved/2022_11_08/11_10_21_untitled_notebook_ervg.livemd
/Users/Shared/repositories/personal/elixir/livebook/tmp/livebook_data/dev/autosaved/2022_11_22/19_15_12_untitled_notebook_p75e.livemd

What I found interesting was that my files in ~/Library/Application Support/livebook/autosaved/ did not show up. Had I not realized there could be different locations, I may have overlooked the notebook I was looking for all along. I have no clue why locate doesn't scour the directories in ~/Library it should have access to but that's a problem for another day.

Introduction to DockYard Beacon CMS

December 1, 2022 · 7 min read

In December of 2021, Brian Cardarella introduced DockYard Beacon CMS in this series of tweets:

More to come after the New Year (demo video, etc...) but a *very* Alpha version of our new LiveView CMS we're calling "Beacon" has been pushed to GitHub. @1stAvenger has been leading the development efforts.https://t.co/wXj4qJMud4 #myelixirstatus

Details in thread
— Brian Cardarella (@bcardarella) December 23, 2021

Over the course of the past year, I've created a sample project a total of 3 times to get a better understanding for how it operates. I haven't seen a ton of content on Beacon beyond announcement tweets, the mention in the ElixirConf 2022 keynote, and https://beaconcms.org/. This post covers the complete instructions in the readme with some notes on where to go from here. I had run into a few snags at first but a lot of those initial pain points have been hammered out so far. While a basic "Hello World" sample project is great, I plan on expanding on the sample with deeper dives into how Beacon serves up content. It takes a few novel approaches I haven't seen before to create either a CMS that runs along your application or it can be centralized with multi-tenancy. One CMS can service all of your ancillary marketing sites, blogs, or wherever you need the content.

The following instructions are also listed on the sample application readme so you're welcome to skip them if you want to look at the code.

Installation

Steps

Create a top-level directory to keep our application pair. This is temporary as the project matures.
1. mkdir beacon_sample
Clone GitHub - BeaconCMS/beacon: Beacon CMS to ./beacon.
1. git clone git@github.com:BeaconCMS/beacon.git
Start with our first step from the Readme
1. Create an umbrella phoenix app
2. mix phx.new --umbrella --install beacon_sample
Go to the umbrella project directory
1. cd beacon_sample/
Initialize git
1. git init
Commit the freshly initialized project
1. Initial commit of Phoenix v1.6.15 as of the time of this writing.
2. I prefer to capture the version and everything scaffolded as-is. This allows us to revert back to the pristine state if we ever need to.
Add :beacon as a dependency to both apps in your umbrella project
```
# Local:
{:beacon, path: "../../../beacon"},
# Or from GitHub:
{:beacon, github: "beaconCMS/beacon"},
```
1. Add to apps/beacon_sample/mix.exs and apps/beacon_sample_web/mix.exs under the section defp deps do.
2. We choose the local version to override commits as needed. When the project solidifies, the GitHub repository will be far more ideal.
3. I'll want to research the git dependency as I believe we can specify commits? There's possibly no need to have a local revision at all.
Run mix deps.get to install the dependencies.
Commit the changes.
1. Add :beacon as a dependency to both apps in your umbrella project seems like a good enough commit message.

Configure Beacon Repo

Add the Beacon.Repo under the ecto_repos: section in config/config.exs.

Configure the database in dev.exs. We'll do production later.

# Configure beacon database
config :beacon, Beacon.Repo,
username: "postgres",
password: "postgres",
database: "beacon_sample_beacon",
hostname: "localhost",
show_sensitive_data_on_connection_error: true,
pool_size: 10

Commit the changes.
1. Configure Beacon Repo subject with Configure the beacon repository in our dev only environment for now. body.

Create a BeaconDataSource module that implements Beacon.DataSource.Behaviour

Create apps/beacon_sample/lib/beacon_sample/datasource.ex

defmodule BeaconSample.BeaconDataSource do
  @behaviour Beacon.DataSource.Behaviour

  def live_data("my_site", ["home"], _params), do: %{vals: ["first", "second", "third"]}
  def live_data("my_site", ["blog", blog_slug], _params), do: %{blog_slug_uppercase: String.upcase(blog_slug)}
  def live_data(_, _, _), do: %{}
end

Add that DataSource to your config/config.exs

config :beacon,
  data_source: BeaconSample.BeaconDataSource

Commit the changes.
1. Configure BeaconDataSource

Make router (apps/beacon_sample_web/lib/beacon_sample_web/router.ex) changes to cover Beacon pages.

Add a :beacon pipeline. I typically do this towards the pipeline sections at the top, starting at line 17.
```
pipeline :beacon do
  plug BeaconWeb.Plug
end
```

Add a BeaconWeb scope.

scope "/", BeaconWeb do
  pipe_through :browser
  pipe_through :beacon

  live_session :beacon, session: %{"beacon_site" => "my_site"} do
    live "/beacon/*path", PageLive, :path
  end
end

Comment out existing scope.

# scope "/", BeaconSampleWeb do
#   pipe_through :browser

#   get "/", PageController, :index
# end

Commit the changes.
1. Add routing changes

Add some components to your apps/beacon_sample/priv/repo/seeds.exs.

alias Beacon.Components
alias Beacon.Pages
alias Beacon.Layouts
alias Beacon.Stylesheets

Stylesheets.create_stylesheet!(%{
  site: "my_site",
  name: "sample_stylesheet",
  content: "body {cursor: zoom-in;}"
})

Components.create_component!(%{
  site: "my_site",
  name: "sample_component",
  body: """
  <li>
    <%= @val %>
  </li>
  """
})

%{id: layout_id} =
  Layouts.create_layout!(%{
    site: "my_site",
    title: "Sample Home Page",
    meta_tags: %{"foo" => "bar"},
    stylesheet_urls: [],
    body: """
    <header>
      Header
    </header>
    <%= @inner_content %>

    <footer>
      Page Footer
    </footer>
    """
  })

%{id: page_id} =
  Pages.create_page!(%{
    path: "home",
    site: "my_site",
    layout_id: layout_id,
    template: """
    <main>
      <h2>Some Values:</h2>
      <ul>
        <%= for val <- @beacon_live_data[:vals] do %>
          <%= my_component("sample_component", val: val) %>
        <% end %>
      </ul>
      <.form let={f} for={:greeting} phx-submit="hello">
        Name: <%= text_input f, :name %> <%= submit "Hello" %>
      </.form>
      <%= if assigns[:message], do: assigns.message %>
    </main>
    """
  })

Pages.create_page!(%{
  path: "blog/:blog_slug",
  site: "my_site",
  layout_id: layout_id,
  template: """
  <main>
    <h2>A blog</h2>
    <ul>
      <li>Path Params Blog Slug: <%= @beacon_path_params.blog_slug %></li>
      <li>Live Data blog_slug_uppercase: <%= @beacon_live_data.blog_slug_uppercase %></li>
    </ul>
  </main>
  """
})

Pages.create_page_event!(%{
  page_id: page_id,
  event_name: "hello",
  code: """
    {:noreply, Phoenix.LiveView.assign(socket, :message, "Hello \#{event_params["greeting"]["name"]}!")}
  """
})

Run ecto.reset to create and seed our database(s).
1. cd apps/beacon_sample.
2. mix ecto.setup (as our repos haven't been created yet).
3. mix ecto.reset thereafter.
We can skip to Step 22 now that the SafeCode package works as expected.
This is typically where we run into issues with safe_code on the inner content of the layout seed, specifically:
```
** (RuntimeError) invalid_node:

assigns . :inner_content
```
1. If you remove the line <%= @inner_content %>, seeding seems to complete.
2. Running mix phx.server throws another error:
```
** (RuntimeError) invalid_node:

assigns . :val
```
3. It looks like safe_code is problematic and needs to be surgically removed from Beacon for now.
In Beacon's repository, remove SafeCode.Validator.validate_heex! function calls from the loaders
1. lib/beacon/loader/layout_module_loader.ex
2. lib/beacon/loader/page_module_loader.ex
3. lib/beacon/loader/component_module_loader.ex
Fix the seeder to work without SafeCode.
1. Change line 49 in apps/beacon_sample/priv/repo/seeds.exs under Pages.create_page! from <%= for val <- live_data[:vals] do %> to <%= for val <- live_data.vals do %>.
Commit the seeder changes.
1. Add component seeds

Enable Page Management and the Page Management API in router (apps/beacon_sample_web/lib/beacon_sample_web/router.ex).

require BeaconWeb.PageManagement
require BeaconWeb.PageManagementApi

scope "/page_management", BeaconWeb.PageManagement do
    pipe_through :browser

    BeaconWeb.PageManagement.routes()
end

scope "/page_management_api", BeaconWeb.PageManagementApi do
    pipe_through :api

    BeaconWeb.PageManagementApi.routes()
end

Commit the Page Management router changes.
1. Add Page Management routes
Navigate to http://localhost:4000/beacon/home to view the main CMS page.
1. You should see Header, Some Values, and Page Footer with a zoom-in cursor over the page.
Navigate to http://localhost:4000/beacon/blog/beacon_is_awesome to view the blog post.
1. You should see Header, A blog, and Page Footer with a zoom-in cursor over the page.
Navigate to http://localhost:4000/page_management/pages to view the Page Management section.
1. You should see Listing Pages, Reload Modules, a list of pages, and New Page.

Playground

We should put the page management through its paces to determine weak points.

Add another more robust layout.
1. Can we bring in JS frameworks like Vue? My guess is no, the layout looks to start under a <main>.
2. Inject javascript at the bottom, this should load at the bottom of our <body> section.
3. Try CDN urls first, then localhost.
Add another stylesheet. How do we use stylesheet_urls?
Add another more robust component.
1. Can we use LiveView slots here? We're on 0.17.7.
A replica of Laravel Nova panel of pages. Welcome and Home are Laravel defaults. Users would be useful as we could integrate with phx gen auth.
1. What migrations are possibly included by Phoenix? Only users?
2. Add a user profile page.

Notes

The dependency safe_code was a problem during my first two attempts.
- The third attempt on 11/6/2022 has no issues so far.
I ran into issues by failing to add a BeaconWeb scope and adding it as BeaconSampleWeb instead.
- Navigating to http://localhost:4000/page/home throws an UndefinedFunctionError as function BeaconSampleWeb.PageLive.__live__/0 is undefined (module BeaconSampleWeb.PageLive is not available).
The sample isn't as "pristine" as I'd like due to the bug fix but it really shouldn't be a showstopper.
- Fixed this as I generated a new repository. There really aren't a ton of steps.
As of 3/16 page management only covers the page. The layout, component, and stylesheet models are not covered yet.
Stylesheets are injected into the <head> as inline <style> tags.
Layout sits under <body><div data-phx-main="true">
Running the server (mix phx.server) immediately boots our Beacon components before it shows the url.

2021 So Far

November 14, 2021 · 3 min read

Originally, I wrote up a post trying to give a 2020 - 2021 overview that got hosed with a local git repo of this blog. I'm using the moment to remind myself that backups are important. It's also important to complete ideas for posts or journals quickly, even if something doesn't feel complete. Letting those linger for days without a git commit that hit the server is a genuine problem and I need to at the very least create and push to a new branch often.

One change that happened at the end of 2020, I started the journal section to try to capture bite-sized rough ideas. I had started a journal at work with notes in files like Phoenix Developer Diary.txt and I looked for a solution to merge my different diaries. The excellent Claire Codes has an extremely consistent diary at clairecodes and served as my main source of inspiration.

I've gone all-in learning Elixir by participating in my first Advent of Code in 2020. I tapered off pretty quickly as I had serious problems working through loops and control flow. Seeing other examples on Elixir Forum helped immensely as I had slowly gotten better at reading the code. Later on in the year, I decided to take a TodoMVC sample through to a LiveView version with a little help from other resources on the internet. I had also started a diary where I wanted to capture the approaches I took each day I worked on the example. I have a plan to try to tackle my version from scratch but I'm also looking at other application ideas.

While the Advent of Code and TodoMVC was good to get my feet wet, I learned far more by pushing through Exercism exercises. If you're on Exercism and curious, my solutions can be found here. I highly recommend using Exercism to learn any language it covers as the recently released version 3 makes for a great experience. Exercises feel a bit more "real world" and less like brain teasers that happen to use programming concepts. Even if I happened to look at the HINTS.md file, it never felt like cheating as it would only guide us toward a solution, not implement it.

After attending the excellent ElixirConf 2021 virtually, I've started working with Livebook in a few examples. I wanted to highlight the 3 notebooks that use the excellent spider_man package to crawl 3 websites: Elixir Jobs, Elixir Radar Jobs, and Elixir Companies. Parsing the DOM of each required slowly stretching far outside my comfort zone. It's also worth mentioning that in the Elixir Jobs example, I left a problem I found under the Sorting the Results section. Due to the zero-width space, the section throws the message ** (SyntaxError) nofile:5:1: unexpected token: "" (column 1, code point U+200B).

Coming to the end of 2021, I'm looking forward to immersing myself deeper in the Elixir ecosystem. Livebook is also a great way to get your feet wet with Elixir concepts, like a powerful language scratchpad. There have been other life changes since January 2020 but those deserve separate posts when I can get to them. Fortunately, the pandemic hasn't been harsh on my family or extended family at all, which I consider an extreme blessing. I can't say we weren't impacted by the last 2 years but things could've been much worse.

Gridsome - Multiple Instances of the Source Filesystem Plugin

January 26, 2020 · 2 min read

In my last post, I mentioned the transition to Gridsome and it has been relatively pain free. I owe a lot of this to the existing community and the great list of starter resources. If a concept isn't explained or clear in the docs, chances are you can gain some insight from the various starters.

One particular concept I had a problem with right out of the gate was how to use markdown files from multiple directories. I started with the post type to handle /year/month/day/title routes but I wanted to move to an equivalent of the generic page type from Hexo. In doing research to the search terms I could've used months ago, I stumbled on multiple issues that point out how to do it.

In the file gridsome.config.js, I use the following snippet in the plugins section:

{
  use: '@gridsome/source-filesystem',
  options: {
    path: 'blog/articles/**/*.md',
    typeName: 'Article',
    refs: {
      authors: {
        typeName: 'Author',
        create: true
      },
    }
  }
},
{
  use: '@gridsome/source-filesystem',
  options: {
    path: 'blog/posts/**/*.md',
    typeName: 'Post',
    refs: {
      authors: {
        typeName: 'Author',
        create: true
      },
      categories: {
        typeName: 'Category',
        create: true
      },
      tags: {
        typeName: 'Tag',
        create: true
      },
    }
  }
},

Since Gridsome has a concept of pages already, I chose the word article to represent them instead. As an example, the portfolio page is an article type while this page represents a post type. While hindsight makes this seem intuitive now, I somehow had the impression that you were only allowed one plugin type for safety reasons.

To point out something else, the portfolio page highlights a technique I didn't think was possible at the time. The parent portfolio page is an article type but all the subsequent child pages are markdown files in a separate portfolio directory as a portfolio type. In the plugins section of gridsome.config.js:

{
  use: '@gridsome/source-filesystem',
  options: {
    path: 'blog/portfolio/**/*.md',
    typeName: 'Portfolio',
    refs: {
      authors: {
        typeName: 'Author',
        create: true
      },
    }
  }
},

Coming from Hexo, I opt for placing content in markdown files and having unique layouts defined in the various pages and templates files. As much as Gridsome is a generic website framework, I find that it can be extremely flexible to whatever workflow you wish to create. There are some parts of Hexo I miss like scaffolding new page types or steering me into blog concepts but the transition to Gridsome has been rather smooth. While Gridsome may not be for everyone, I can definitely see how JAMstack has gained traction recently. Barring very few gotchas, working on this site is fun again even in the I-can-see-every-blemish state it's currently in.