Archive

HTTP Logging and Go API Template Updates

I built my first Go library! httplog provides middleware which logs http requests and responses along with a few other features I find useful. I thought it might be helpful for some. At the very least, I tried to document the library reasonably well, spending a lot of time developing the README and ensuring the GoDoc was in good shape. I learned a lot through this exercise. I also restructured my Go API template repository to try and shape it based on Mat Ryer’s fantastic “How I write Go HTTP services after seven years” post.

October 13, 2018 Read

Basic Redis Examples with Go

Redis is pretty great. It is the #1 most loved database for the second year in a row, according to a recent Stack Overflow survey. I decided it was high time I taught myself how to use it with Go. There are a number of libraries in the Go ecosystem for Redis, but the two most popular are go-redis and redigo. Each library has a decent amount of stars, contributors, etc.

July 17, 2018 Read

Containerizing a Go API with Docker For Mac

I’m working through creating a RESTful API template. As part of it, I want to be able to “Containerize” my app using docker and deploy it to “the cloud”. Baby steps for me though — I want to get everything working locally first. This post is about “containerizing” my API using Docker and getting it to work locally on my Mac. Right now, from a networking perspective, my app is pretty simple — it needs connectivity on two ports: 1 port for database traffic, 1 port for http traffic.

April 6, 2018 Read

HTTP JSON Error Responses in Go

I like simple structured messages using JSON in error responses, similar to Stripe, Uber and many others… { "error": { "type": "validation_failed", "message": "Username is a required field" } } In my last story, I wrote about HTTP Logging and in that I mentioned that I have used “chained” middleware using the Adapter pattern from Mat Ryer’s excellent post. You’ll see that below, but also in addition, I’m wrapping my final true app handler (in this case, CreateUser) inside an ErrHandler type — eh.

March 18, 2018 Read

Drums: King Crimson Red Live @ Great Scott

Fun show a couple nights ago @ Great Scott in Allston. Cover of King Crimson’s Red… King Crimson Cover - Red

March 14, 2018 Read

Go API Template v0.0.2

Hello Gopher community! This represents my first code release, albeit a minor one. I’m hopeful that this will be helpful. I believe in templates and am trying to put together a working API template from all the best practices I’ve found in the Go community. There’s more details on the github readme here Thanks!

October 20, 2017 Read

And then there was Go...

Eureka! After many many brushes with many different languages over many many years, I think I finally found the language that is right for me - Go! It’s hard to say why really, but something about learning this language feels right - it’s well thought out, has a great community and is making programming fun again for me. It’s built in http libraries are incredible. I’m just beginning, but this could be my forever language :)

January 9, 2017 Read

Drums: Frankenstein Practice

Had a great practice and took some fun footage of us playing Frankenstein. Edgar Winter Cover - Frankenstein

April 28, 2016 Read

Setting up OS X El Capitan for node development with node-oracledb

After stumbling through the setup of Oracle (for use with node and node-oracledb) on my new and first ever Macbook, I thought I’d put together a one pager on setup for those who may have had similar struggles. I was able to find everything I needed through existing pages, but I bounced around a lot to several different sites to find all the information and it took me several attempts. I tried to cobble all the steps together in a fairly verbose way as I had to learn certain things along the way…

April 5, 2016 Read

Drums: Raju Live @ O'Brien's

Fun show last night @ O’Brien’s in Allston. Friend of mine grabbed this clip with his phone. There is some troubling drum face happening here… John McLaughlin Cover - Raju

March 16, 2016 Read

Apex 5 - Minimize Left Sidebar Navigation by Default

You may find yourself in a situation where you proudly unveil your upgraded-to-Universal Theme app to your user-base after working on it for months with your beautiful wide screen monitor (page designer pretty much mandates this) and your user-base is not quite as happy as you thought they’d be as they don’t all have super wide screens and they, for some reason, have low-resolution monitors (like 1280 x 768 low). The users may think your super cool left sidebar navigation, which is maximized by default, is neat, but they’d actually prefer their space back… If you should find yourself in this situation, there is an easy answer!

October 15, 2015 Read

Raiser v0.5 - Committed to Github

I just released an early version of my “raiser” code for Oracle PL/SQL, leveraging OraOpenSource’s logger utility. I’d love to get anyone’s input and help with it. The Github project is https://github.com/gilcrest/raiser As background, I’ve used the Quest Error Manager (QEM) in my codebase for years, but have recently switched primarily to using logger for most things. There are a few things that QEM does that logger does not… In a highly distributed environment, you really need to be able to raise an exception to a user with a particular error message and unique identifier.

August 17, 2015 Read