web development

Coder Superpower

This so often feels exactly like what I do … except the big bucks part …

Simple file upload using jQuery and AJAX

Here’s something that came in helpful the other day at work – “Simple file upload using jQuery and AJAX“. We were on the right track, but this blog post helped iron out the last few details. In particular, this bit:

$.ajax({
        url: 'submit.php?files',
        type: 'POST',
        data: data,
        cache: false,
        dataType: 'json',
        processData: false, // Don't process the files
        contentType: false, // Set content type to false as jQuery will tell the server its a query string request
        success: function(data, textStatus, jqXHR)
        {
            if(typeof data.error === 'undefined')
            {
                // Success so call function to process the form
                submitForm(event, data);
            }
            else
            {
                // Handle errors here
                console.log('ERRORS: ' + data.error);
            }
        },
        error: function(jqXHR, textStatus, errorThrown)
        {
            // Handle errors here
            console.log('ERRORS: ' + textStatus);
            // STOP LOADING SPINNER
        }
    });

And a clarification of the parameters:

2 attributes need to be set to false:

processData – Because jQuery will convert the files arrays into strings and the server can’t pick it up.

contentType – Set this to false because jQuery defaults toapplication/x-www-form-urlencoded and doesn’t send the files. Also setting it to multipart/form-data doesn’t seem to work either.

There’s a GitHub repository with all the necessary example code.

Chrome apps … mind blown!

Don’t ask me how, but I’ve ended up in the Google Chrome Web Store, where I spent the last three hours – especially in the Productivity -> Developer Tools category. I knew, there were plenty of apps to make Chrome OS / Chrome Browser super awesome, but it seems it’s been a while since I looked in there … My mind is officially blown!

I don’t need much from my Fedora laptop – a browser, a terminal, and some instant messaging apps. But these days apparently that’s too much. A lot of the things I do through the regular day can be handled right from the browser apps.

Here are some examples.

Text editors. There is a slew of them! Simple and complex, specialized and generic, fast and … not so much. Have a look at Caret for example. It’s Sublime-like editor, based on the Ace editing component. It offers a selection of themes, syntax highlighting for all the major languages, multiple tabs, project settings, and more!
SSH client. Yup, that’s right. You can connect to your remote servers right out of the browser, using, for example, ServerAuditor.
MySQL clients. Choose between a simple command-line one, like MySQL Console. Or a full-featured one, with ERDs and database browser, like Chrome MySQL Admin.
Git, GitHub, and Gist tools. Which there is a variety of…
Web server (yes, really, a web server running in the web browser!) – Web Server fro Chrome, debugger (Xdebug), and compiler (Compiler.work).

Most of these offer session saving, networking synchronization, Google Drive data saving, social network integration, etc.

Wow! The browser world has come a long way since Netscape 3 …

On the future of apps and mobile web

It’s been a while since I expressed my point of view on the apps and the mobile web. (It hadn’t changed much though.) While reading through the “Why Britain banned mobile apps” article, I caught myself nodding my head in agreement.

So why did the GDS ban apps? It wasn’t because they weren’t technically savvy enough to build them.

Cost, he says. Apps are “very expensive to produce, and they’re very very expensive to maintain because you have to keep updating them when there are software changes,” Terrett says. “I would say if you times that by 300, you’re suddenly talking about a huge team people and a ton of money to maintain that ecosystem”.

How did the UK reach an increasingly mobile population? Responsive websites, he replies. “For government services that we were providing, the web is a far far better way… and still works on mobile.”

Sites can adapt to any screen size, work on all devices, and are open to everyone to use regardless of their device. “If you believe in the open internet that will always win,” he says. And they’re much cheaper to maintain, he adds, because when an upgrade is required, only one platform needs recoding.

I think that the initial boom of mobile apps was caused by two major factors:

Native applications had much better capabilities – user interface, performance, features, offline mode, etc – than their web counterparts. Mobile browsers used to suck big time.
The competition in the app market was much smaller than the competition for the “first page of Google”.

These two reasons were significant enough for a whole lot of people to go into the mobile application development. So much so indeed that a whole new industry appeared.

But I never thought this would be permanent. Unless, of course, there would be other reasons. Which I don’t see. And both of those reasons aren’t valid (to the most part) today.

Smartphones got smarter, stronger, and faster. Mobile browsers improved a whole lot. So unless you are doing something really pixel perfect or resource intensive (like some of the games), the mobile browser is more than enough for you.

And look at the competition in the app markets! There’s like a hundred apps for whatever is that you want. Endless lists of recommended, featured, and sponsored apps for ever growing list of app categories. No matter what your app does – there are a few dozen of others that do the same exact thing.

If you absolutely definitely have to build a mobile app, don’t start with the native one straight away. Do the hybrid one first. Build a web application and package it into the native one with something like Apache Cordova. This will save you tonnes and tonnes of time, money, and pulled out hair. (I learned this the hard way!)

With all the hype mobile apps have generated in the last few years, they have some momentum. They aren’t going to disappear. But just because you can build one, doesn’t mean you should. Build a web app. It’s simpler, faster, and easier. It scales better. It works better (except for very few edge cases). And it will cost you a fraction to support and maintain.

WWW SQL Designer

I came across the WWW SQL Designer today, and I have only one thing to say…

Holy Molly! I’ve been looking for a tool like this for a long long time! It is a web-based database designer, which can export designs into MySQL. It’s super easy to use and it does exactly what it is supposed to. No non-sense. Simply amazing!