With our fully responsive Storytelling WordPress theme you can start building your own story. Using minimalistic design you can showcase content without overwhelming your readers.
Silver Type is an international conference which brings together type designers from all over the world to discuss there work and share experiences.
Cycling culture development project promoting bicycles as fun and sustainable way of transportation
18 months ago I wrote an article on Creating a Cloud Backend for Your Android App Using Parse. Facebook announced earlier this year that they were shutting down Parse on January 28th, 2017 and new signups to the service aren’t possible. With that surprise announcement, this forced developers relying on the service to start looking for alternatives that they could migrate their data to.
Because of this news, I thought I should revisit the topic and cover how to use a different Backend as a Service platform to manage data for your Android application.
For this tutorial, I’ll be looking at Firebase, a popular backend platform acquired by Google in October 2014.
You should always weigh the pros and cons of relying on a BaaS as opposed to building your own. Parse is not the first BaaS platform to shut down (e.g., StackMob) and won’t be the last. As a developer relying on one of these platforms, you should always be ready to migrate and have a backup plan.
With Firebase, you can store and sync data to a NoSQL cloud database. The data is stored as JSON, synced to all connected clients in realtime, and available when your app goes offline. It offers APIs that enable you to authenticate users with email and password, Facebook, Twitter, GitHub, Google, anonymous auth, or to integrate with existing authentication system. It also offers hosting for static assets and offers SSL certificates.
In this article, you’ll create a simple To Do app that will show how to save and retrieve data from Firebase, how to authenticate users, set read/write permissions on the data and validate the data on the server.
Continue reading %Creating a Cloud Backend for Your Android App Using Firebase%
|
One requirement that never changes whether you are working on your projects alone or in a team, on small projects or big, is Code Quality. The bigger the project and the team, the harder it gets to maintain it.
A good way of slowing this increase in difficulty down is to use static analysis tools. Static analysis is the process of analyzing software without actually executing the program - a sort of automatic code review. Static analysis tools will detect common errors, enforce coding standards, and even clean up code blocks. The days of php -l filename are not over, but we now have a number of great tools that go the extra mile in helping us create and maintain high quality code.
Speaking of php -l filename, the good old PHP lint, it's what will execute a syntax analysis on the target file and output any errors it finds. I used to have this little piece of code that I used on and off to send emails with PHP. It is a good starting point for our analysis.
<?php
class Email{
//Constructor
function Email( $subject, $message, $senderName, $senderEmail, $toList, $ccList=0, $bccList=0, $replyTo=0 ){
$this->sender = $senderName . " <$senderEmail>";
$this->replyTo = $replyTo;
$this->subject = $subject;
$this->message = $message;
// Set the To recipients
if( is_array($toList)){
$this->to = join( $toList, "," );
}else{
$this->to = $toList;
}
// Set the cc list
if( is_array($ccList) && sizeof($ccList)){
$this->cc = join( $ccList, "," );
}else{
$this->cc = $ccList;
}
// Set the bcc list
if( is_array($bccList) && sizeof($bccList)){
$this->bcc = join( $bccList, "," );
}else{
$this->bcc = $bccList;
}
}
function sendMail(){
//create the headers for PHP mail() function
$this->headers = "From: " . $this->sender . "\n";
if( $this->replyTo ){
$this->headers .= "Reply-To: " . $this->replyTo . "\n";
}
if( $this->cc ){
$this->headers .= "Cc: " . $this->cc . "\n";
}
if( $this->bcc ){
$this->headers .= "Bcc: " . $this->bcc . "\n";
}
print "To: " . $this->to ."<br>Subject: " . $this->subject . "<br>Message: " . $this->message . "<br>Headers: " . $this->headers;
return mail( $this->to, $this->subject, $this->message, $this->headers );
}
}
As you can see, this is a simple email sending class. If we run our PHP lint
on this code, we will see that everything is good.
php -l Email.php
Continue reading %Static analysis with PHPSA: PHP Smart Analyzer%
It's a silly question, of course. We all have our own moral framework. That framework might be very similar to some – very different to others.
But how flexible is your moral framework? Does it change often? For instance, if I asked you a question today, would you expect to give a different answer a week later? Probably not.
Apparently, our moral compasses are not as fixed as we'd like to think – even over the course of a single day.
Now, when we're talking about 'morals' here, we're not talking about the big obvious ones. The vast majority of us understand it's wrong to injure or kill. But what about those little sins? Do you:
There are a million little tests in a day.
According to a recent study – The Morning Morality Effect (Maryam Kouchaki & Isaac H. Smith) – our decisions change over the course of a normal day. Early in the day, we're far more likely to stick to our moral and ethical code more stringently and choose the muesli.
But as the day wears on, we're increasingly likely to let our guard slip and take an easy option over the 'right' option. That's dialing the pizza instead of cooking what's in the refrigerator. The Harvard study says:
According to the strength model of self-regulation (Baumeister et al., 1998; Muraven & Baumeister, 2000), the capacity for self-control is like a muscle and requires rest after use for its strength to be restored. All acts of self-control thus draw from the same finite resource, and the depletion of that resource hinders a person's ability to subsequently exert self-control.
Interesting stuff.
We can't always know the local time for our users, but when we do, this can help us decide what to offer them and when. There are times when we want to appeal to their sense of duty, ambition, and purpose. That's an AM thing.
There are other times when we might want to appeal to their sense of self-indulgence or escapism. That's more a PM thing.
For instance, booksellers like Amazon might get better results in the morning by making '7 Habits of Highly Effective People' very visible. People are motivated and intent on doing the right thing.
But as the afternoon wears on and people tire, perhaps 'Fifty Shades of Chicken' increases its appeal (yes it's a real book).
Continue reading %Designing for Moral Mornings and Naughty Nights%
